#Why would you want to be a letter that's only worth two points in scrabble? This line is from the series Fresh off the Boat.

[marshmallowatheart]

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (Part 28)

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25) (26) (27)

"Vee, we've been looking for you guys," Wallace announces when he spots the pseudo-couple. He's got his pink cotton candy in hand and his blue slushie in the other.

"Dude, did Logan win all that?" Darrell asks, he has his own stick with blue cotton candy and a candy apple for Logan in his hand. He stares at Veronica in awe, she's got six mini bears stuffed in her bag, peaking through the edges and one stuffed under her arm as she digs into a plate full of funnel cake.

Veronica hums, nodding with her mouth full as she gestures to Logan who's still playing this ring tossing game because he wants the big prize which is a brown bear holding a cliched big red heart wit with the words 'I Wuv You Beary Much' etched onto it. She'd told him he didn't have to, that he's won her more than enough bears but he's determined to add the 'ultimate prize' to this collection.

Meanwhile Heather gaps at her sister, she's not entirely surprised that Veronica is eating something else but she had to stand in a whole other line to get her the caramel popcorn and she's stuffing her face with funnel cake?

"You're eating funnel cake and we got you caramel popcorn," Heather lets out frustrate as she tosses the packet to Veronica.

Veronica gives her sister a look as she barely catches the packet since her hands are already occupied. "I got hungry and they smelled really good," she defends not regretting her decision one bit and shoves the packet of caramelized corn into her already bulging bag.

"I had to stand in a whole other line for it," the little blonde complains and Veronica lets out a sorry look, promising that she's going to eat it later and that Heather's effort would not be in vain.

The young Mars girl rolls her eyes but moves closer to her sister and gets a whiff of the came. Her annoyance fades away as she stares at the chocolatey goodness and concedes, "They do smell good, can I have a bite?"

Veronica eyes her sister and reluctantly decides, "Only one."

Heather beams, taking in a large bite and Veronica sighs because Heather's got a big mouth and she definitely just cheated her way by chewing off at least two and a half regular sized bites there.

"Okay, Logan?" Veronica calls for his attention since everyone is now gathered together and waiting. "We need to get moving."

He glances back at her, handing her a small white unicorn key chain and bargains, "One more try."

Veronica grabs it as she nods, lets him pay and then butts him out of the way. It's a fact that these games are rigged so you couldn't win the big prizes so she tilts her head and bats her lashes at the booth attendant. "Hey," she's chirps, pearly white smile and her voice a pitch higher. "If I hit the bulls eye three times in a row, would that win me the bear? I know it's totally a different game but I mean it is the same booth, right?"

"Sure, blondie," he smirks. "If you can hit three bulls eye in a row. You can have any bear you like, sweetheart."

Veronica gives him a tight smile and hands Logan her bag and funnel cake - which Heather quickly snatches and begins to finish off.

Darrell hands Logan the candy apple that they'd got for him, Logan thanks him with a smile and begins to munch on it as Veronica takes the lead in trying to win the bear.

She's become accustomed to having people underestimate her and she's learned to use this to her advantage - be it in getting information or bargaining her way to winning bears that hold hearts that say 'I Wuv You Beary Much' for her fake boyfriend.

"How is this fair?" Logan grumbles as she hits one bulls eye after another. "I have to do ring tossing and she gets away with darts?"

Veronica gives the guy a bright smile as he hands her the bear, he's looking at her with an expression that's a mix between impressed and shocked and Veronica feels satisfied.

"Here ya go," she hands the brown bear to Logan. "You can name her after me."

He chuckles, he'd been trying to win the bear for her but he accepts the gifted prize with a smile. He glances at the bear, his thump grazes over the heart and he grins.

"Oooh, Ophelia is here," Heather chirps, she shoves the now empty plate into Veronica's bare hands and skips towards her best friend with Darrell following behind her.

Veronica sighs and grumbles, "She finished the cake."

Logan arches his brow and points out, "You make cake all the time."

"It's carnival cake, Logan," she emphasizes like there's some magic added into their baked goods and food that don't exist in the ordinary world. "It's once a year cake."

"We can buy more," he suggests, the stall is right there and the line isn't really that long so he could easily get her another piece of cake.

"Nah," she shakes her head. "I really want a chocolate shake and corn dogs," she muses, hunger building up in her stomach once again.

"Corn dogs and shakes, coming up," he nods, as though he was a waiter taking her order and she chuckles, hooking her arm around his offered one.

--vm--

In the next hour, Georgia joins them, leaving Wallace a giddy mess every time she praised him for winning her something and Ryan joined soon after thus completing the newly formed fabulous foursome.

"Yo, Vee, doesn't this make me look like a G?" Darrell poses with sunglasses and his hands crossed as he leans backwards completing his image.

Veronica looks at him, lips pursed, unsure of what exactly he means by 'G' but bobs her head to appease him anyway.

Logan chuckles at the interaction and Heather's brows furrow, shaking her head. "Why would you want to be a letter that's only worth two points in scrabble?"

Veronica tries to hold back her laugh as Heather and Darrell continue to bicker. Ophelia and Ryan talk amongst themselves in the background, not so silently laughing at their friends.

"So think the kids will like a go at the bumper cars?" Logan asks, staring at the ride across them.

A grin spreads across her face and she teases, "Do you want a go at the bumper cars?"

He shrugs, slight grin on his mouth and casually answers, "I wouldn't hate it."

She laughs, clearly seeing that he would very much enjoy a go at it and roughly ten minutes later, they're all settling into four different cars; Heather and Ophelia, Darrell and Ryan, Veronica and Georgia, finally Logan and Wallace.

Heather has her hands on the wheel and Ophelia is kicking back, whispering in Heather's ears and the duo giggle wildly.

Darrell and Ryan have both their hands on their wheel, eagerly anticipating the start of the game as they grin wickedly at all the players they know.

Veronica and Georgia have their hands on their wheel too, Georgia smiling widely, having fun just playing while Veronica grins staring directly at Logan. She arches a brow, challenging and he's smirking at her, holding her gaze and wholeheartedly accepting her challenge with Wallace beside him and their hands steady on the wheel, he's fully prepared to go head to head with her - bumper car to bumper car.

The other seats fill up rather quickly and it slowly starts up. Veronica's grin widens and they accelerated headfirst into Logan and Wallace, laughing loudly, thoroughly enjoying getting the first hit in.

Heather comes from behind and swings into Veronica and the rest of the three minutes the gang spends knocking each other, screaming and laughing manically as they enjoy the ride.

--vm--

The kids go on ride after ride with Wallace and Georgia while Veronica finally gets to eat her foot long meat stuffed sandwich. She's satisfied herself with her share of rides, bumper cars, horse carousel and rollercoasters. Now, all she wants to do is satisfy her hunger ever since they entered the carnival.

Logan watches her with amusement, he's got his own foot long meat stuffed sandwich at her instance that he has to try this once a year carnival only sandwich.

It doesn't take much to persuade him because it smells delicious, looks tempting as hell and Veronica is excited beyond compare - an excitement she's only ever shown for Italian food. So it's fair to say that he's game for going to town with this long ass sandwich.

It's the look on her face when she takes the first bite, eyes closed, mouth stuff and relaxed in pleasure that he never wants to forget. She slightly moans at the taste of it, it's been a year since she's had this sandwich and it tastes even better than before.

Logan seriously consider buying this stall and keeping it for their sandwich needs just so that he can hear her moan again but honestly he wishes he could hear her moan in a different context.

He takes his first bite and he gets it; the meat is soft and easy to bite into, marinated with spicy sauce that's just right enough to give him a tinge of the flavour and not burn his mouth, even the lettuce tastes good combined with all the other ingredients and the Fresh roll is so fresh, he could eat it plain. He doesn't know what else is in there, there's different textures with subtle favours and all he can do is savour the flavour and enjoy it.

"It's good, right?" Veronica voices out between bites.

He hums out his agreement, his mouth still stuffed and when he swallows, he verbalized, "So good."

She smiles, simply letting herself enjoy sitting across Logan and eating one of the best meals that the carnival offers as they listen to live bands play in the background.

It's ridiculous that he looks so good while he's eating a rather messy meal and she chuckles when he notices that the sauce is dripping and he has to back away fast or lick it off.

It's strange how all her ordinary days have gotten better with Logan in it and how ordinary moments hold such significant fondness in her brain. She wants to tell him just how much he's come to mean to her and how she kind of wants to kiss the sauce right of his messy lips.

--vm--

It's almost time for them to leave, the stars shin bright over the moonlit sky, and tomorrow is school. Everyone is watching the magic performance on stage but Veronica finds her sister with her shoulders sagging as she stands in front of the gaming booth with a fishing net in hand.

"Heather? You okay?" Veronica asks as she comes to stand beside her little sister.

"Of course, why wouldn't I be?" Heather rebuffs as she stares at the yellow little ducks floating on a kiddies pool waiting to be caught.

Veronica cocks her head as she stares at her sister with a quizzical look on her face. "Because you're losing at the easiest game ever invented," she points out.

"It's tricky," she defends with no actual vindication in her voice. "What if I get a prize I don't want?"

Veronica arches a brow. "Yeah because all these prizes sure are for winners," she rolls out. "Let's see, a pack of cards, Rubix cube, one dollar knock off Barbie doll, marbles, plastic headband that has razor sharp teeth that bite into your skull?"

"One can never have too many marbles," Heather dryly remarks. "Lessons learned from Home Alone," she twitches her head a bit to the side and decidingly grabs a yellow duck with her fishing net.

The attendant looks under the caught duck and hands her a Rubix cube which Heather takes with a quick thank you. Veronica supposes of the lot of toys, it's one of the better ones to have won.

Heather tears apart the plastic packet, handing the wasted plastic to her sister as she twists the colours of the cube and Veronica silently walks with beside her as she wonders if ice cream would cheer her up. Ice cream always did the trick.

"Ophelia likes Ryan," the little girl confesses, her eyes still on her Rubix cube as she jumbles up the colours.

"Really?" Veronica's brows shoot up at the new piece of information. "I thought she liked Darrell."

"I thought so too," her sister quietly admits and Veronica offers her a sympathetic smile but Heather's eyes are still on the cube and Veronica's not really sure how to have this conversation with her sister.

"Do you like Ryan too?" The older Mars girl asks even though she knows the answer - has known the answer ever since she mentioned Ryan to Heather only to have her turn into a stuttering mess.

"Of course not," she denies weakly. "I just told you that Ophelia likes him."

They're walking aimlessly and Veronica thinks that any discussion about boys need to have comfort food involved so she directs them to the opposite end where there's seemingly endless choices of once in a year carnival food lies in wait.

It's a sad fact that she's been in Heather's shoes and she still doesn't know what's the right choice to make. She'd thought she'd made the right choice in avoiding Logan, in not telling Lilly about the kiss, in squashing her feelings. But she still lost her best friend.

She wonders how things would have worked out if they were simply honest. She wonders if she could have mustered the courage to be brave enough to do so. She wonders if she has the courage now to be brave enough to tell Logan how she really feels.

She's been waiting for the philosophical other shoe to drop, for Logan to go back to Lilly, for Lilly to successfully break them up or for Logan to make it clear that this has all been fake. But she's the only one drawing lines only to cross them.

Veronica's ordering mini-doughnuts with caramelized and chocolate toppings, she eyes other stalls but she decides to keep it light since she's been eating a lot.

"You know," she starts once she has the tray of mini-doughnuts in her hand. "When I was your age, my friend liked someone and I liked him too," she confesses, offering her sister a doughnut from the tray.

"Really?" She asks, intrigued at the story her sister seems to be about to tell as she accepts one of the caramelized mini-doughnuts.

"Yeah," Veronica lets out as she chews. "I think the only thing I regret about it is not being able to be honest about my feelings," she admits.

Like Logan, she has what if'd their past in every possible way. What if she told him she liked him? What if he told her he liked her? What if she didn't avoid him? What if he saw the way she blushed every time she looked at him and thought about the feel of his lips on hers? What if she'd told Lilly about the kiss? What if she told Lilly she liked Logan? Would any one of those scenarios have made a difference? Would all of them have? Would things be better or worse now? Would they still have come to be who they were now? Would she and Logan have broken up like how Lilly and him broke up?

"I think if I were I wouldn't have lost my friend and I wouldn't have waited five years to be with the guy," she says even though she's not really with the guy.

"Logan?" Heather whispers his name with a small gasp.

"Logan," Veronica confirms and they're silent for a moment and Veronica wonders if five years from now would she be thinking up scenarios about the boy that has once again captured her heart?

She doesn't want Logan to end up on her what if list again. She doesn't want to live this life of what ifs and what could have been or think.

"Was the girl Duncan's sister?" Heather breaks the silence.

"Yeah," she sighs. "There was a lot of miscommunication and far too many feelings for twelve year old girls to know how to handle by themselves."

"You guys hate each other now," comes the doubtful voice of Heather.

"Years of feeling like someone you trusted betrayed you can manifest into something really ugly," Veronica deducts, thoughts of Lilly and her as two little girls fresh in her mind. "I don't want that to happen to you. You should talk to her and be honest about your feelings."

"You don't think she'll hate me like Lilly hates you?" She bluntly outs forth because even though she's become friends with everyone in her class but the one she values most is Ophelia, they've been friends for as long as she can remember and she can't picture her life without her.

"I think if I were honest with Lilly instead of ignoring it all or if Lilly told me how she felt about me instead of being so passive aggressive about it all things might have been different."

It's the first time Veronica admits that something could have been done to salvage their friendship. She wonders if Lilly knew that she wasn't the only one that felt betrayal. She wonders if Lilly knew her tough skin didn't just come from losing her mother. She wonders if Lilly knows the worst punishment wasn't that she was parading Logan around but it was losing her. She wonders if Lilly's ever regretted not having her around anymore.

"Do you regret letting her have Logan?"

"That wasn't my choice to make. You can't let someone have someone else," Veronica tries to explain. "People aren't possession. It was his choice to make no matter what the circumstances. I liked him back then but if he hadn't made all of the choices that he's made, experienced all of these things that led him up to me, would he still be this person that I've come to love wholeheartedly?"

Heather stares up at her sister with unwavering awe in her big hazel eyes. "You love him?"

"I really do," Veronica nods, a little smile curling in place and it's the first time that she's admitted out lout that she loves Logan and it feels so much different that thinking it. It feels so much more real. "I think that whatever choice you make, you're gonna be okay," she assures her sister. "You're really smart and you're really tough and you've got me no matter what."

Heather nods, appreciating her sister's words and wanting to know more because it feels like she's finally been let into this trust circle with this boy talk. "Did you tell him that you love him?"

Veronica shakes her head no. She doesn't explain that she's afraid of being honest because of her own insecurities. She doesn't explain how often she forgets that other people exist and finds herself falling more in love with him. She doesn't explain how the person she loves might still love someone else.

"I think he loves you too," Heather says with depth Veronica can't believe she's hearing. "He looks at you a lot, Ronica," she adds with an insightful look in her eye. "When you're not paying attention. He looks at you to see if you're having a good time."

"He does?" She blinks in surprise, the observation from her little sister makes her fluttery.

Heather nods and Veronica's lips curve into a silly smile. She loves him and the possibility that he loves her back makes her feel warm and glowy inside. She thinks that maybe it's time for her to be honest about her feelings, to finally take a chance and give him all the love that consumes her. She doesn't want him to be another what if in her life. She doesn't want him to be the one that got away. She doesn't want him being her fake boyfriend anymore. She wants the real thing. She wants to share all her real firsts with him and be loved in return. She wants to give herself this chance that she's always denied herself from having. She wants him. She wants Logan.

[robininthelabyrinth]

I am grinning like a FOOL at nmj/wwx/lwj. Aaaaaahhh just imagine the looks on everyone’s faces ESPECIALLY the jins, can you IMAGINE. Every sect except their own has entered a marriage alliance in one swoop, and that marriage alliance includes three of the most powerful cultivators alive. I’m in love with this.

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, past 5 - aka Pastime (with good company)

-

“I can forgive you for getting married, but not for making me tell Uncle about it,” Lan Xichen said without ceremony as he swept into the room like a puff of aggravated white cloud – and yes, he was well aware that was how he was coming off, he had plenty of self-awareness. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was actually upset anymore; he hadn’t seen so many secret little smiles from Lan Wangji since their childhood. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him turn that shade of red before. I think he was even thinking of throwing something at me!”

“Did you mention the bit where it technically fulfilled his requirements regarding devoting to a single spouse?” Nie Mingjue asked from behind his teacup, eyes bright with amusement and not even a speck of shame. It was just like him, too; Nie Mingjue was not one to regret decisions he had made. “Huaisang mentioned that you’d said that: I rather liked that one.”

“I did,” Lan Xichen said, making a face at Nie Mingjue and causing him to laugh. “It didn’t help. As you probably could have guessed, you – oh! A-Yao, be careful, you’re spilling the tea.”

Jin Guangyao looked down at where he’d filled his teacup to overflowing. “Ah,” he said, and put the teapot down, reaching for a piece of cloth to clean up the mess on the table. “Forgive me, I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing…I’m sorry, er-ge, did you say that da-ge was marrying? And you – told your uncle about it, for some reason?”

“Well, there wasn’t much of a choice,” Lan Xichen sighed, sitting down and accepting the cup of tea that Nie Mingjue slid over to him instead. “Since one of his brides is going to be my brother.”

“Your brother? You mean – Wangji? And - one of his brides…?”

“He only has the one brother; who else could he mean?” Nie Mingjue pointed out, and Lan Xichen shot him a glare to remind him to behave – it wasn’t Jin Guangyao’s fault that he probably had more siblings than he could count on both hands and feet, after all.

“Yes,” he said, turning to Jin Guangyao. “Forgive me, A-Yao, I entirely forgot you weren’t at the Unclean Realm when this was all being discussed at the start. As it stands now, Da-ge will be taking two brides to share the position of first wife, one of which is my brother.”

Jin Guangyao was blinking very rapidly, clearly attempting to process the information and just as clearly having some difficulty. Possibly at the idea of Nie Mingjue getting married at all, much less in a cutsleeve marriage – in fact, Lan Xichen wasn’t sure he’d ever mentioned to him that Lan Wangji was a cutsleeve. 

Did Jin Guangyao maybe have some lingering prejudices? It seemed unlikely, given what Lan Xichen knew of his personality, but such issues were more often seen among the common people…

“I see,” Jin Guangyao said. “And…who’s the other one?”

“Wei Wuxian,” Nie Mingjue said, and he looked so incredibly pleased about it that Lan Xichen reluctantly shelved the idea of scolding him further. A smile from Lan Wangji, a smile from Wei Wuxian, a smile from Nie Mingjue – anything that caused this many smiles was bound to be a good thing.

Even if poor Jin Guangyao’s smile did look a bit strained…

-

“He’s what?!”

Jin Guangyao held his hands apart as if to indicate he had no idea how it had happened either, and Jin Zixuan thought that for once in his life his duplicative half-brother might be completely and utterly sincere. “He confirmed it himself.”

“Wei Wuxian,” Jin Guangshan growled, having apparently decided to skip over shock in favor of paranoid theorizing. “Of course – all this time, Nie Mingjue pretended to disdain the Stygian Tiger seal, looking down on it, but in reality he was seeking his own means of obtaining it –”

Jin Zixuan didn’t think that was especially likely.

He’d fought with Nie Mingjue during the war as one of his lieutenants. Even though his father had insisted that the Jin sect fight under its own banner, it’d quickly become obvious that none of the generals his father had appointed had the slightest idea of what they were doing, unlike Nie Mingjue; to keep his people from enduring another slaughter, Jin Zixuan had forced himself to swallow his pride and ask Nie Mingjue for advice.

The other man had never once lorded it over him, even though Jin Zixuan was in the weaker position – his letters had been straightforward and to the point, answering his questions without any judgment, and when they worked together in person, he was the same.

Jin Zixuan had spent entire nights worrying about his motives, and a shamefully long time to realize that the reason Nie Mingjue was acting the way he did was because he was just – like that. Honest and forthright and disinclined towards scheming, the way everyone said he was; a man who was righteous in the sense that he did what he thought was right, not in the sense of flattering himself to think he was better than others.

(Somewhere along the line, Jin Zixuan had shifted from choking down his pride to choking down guilt at thinking that Nie Mingjue was a better leader than his father – and that he’d probably have been a better father, too, no matter how Nie Huaisang had ultimately turned out. He thought, though he did not know, that if he had not adopted some of Nie Mingjue’s straightforwardness in pursuing Jiang Yanli, she might not be his bride today.)

“ – why didn’t any of us think of that?” Jin Guangshan was demanding when Jin Zixuan tuned back into the conversation, and it made him nearly choke. “A-Xuan! What sounds are you making over there?”

“Nothing, father,” Jin Zixuan said, coughing a little to clear his throat. “Merely – admiring how unorthodox Chifeng-zun’s thinking must have been.”

Jin Guangyao’s lips twitched. It was only a second, there and gone, but Jin Zixuan had still seen the little glimpse of humor. It was truly a pity, he reflected, that his brother wanted his position more than his friendship; they might have been good friends, in another world. Of course, that was the way things went in Lanling, with each person out for themselves, but ever since he’d married Jiang Yanli, he’d started to think that perhaps the greedy, grasping, conniving world his father had cultivated around him wasn’t the right way to lead a sect.

He used to think that the Jin sect was better than everyone else because of the way they thought – that only they were honest enough to acknowledge the frailties in human nature and to make use of them, rather than pretending that people could really be brave and righteous and true, that friendship was a real thing rather than another name for allies of convenience, that love was anything more than a momentary lapse, a weakness – but he didn’t any more. The other righteous sects might be naïve in their belief in righteousness, but believing in righteousness encouraged righteous behavior; even if it was done only as a façade, for most people, the façade would eventually turn into truth after it became enough of a habit.

For most people, anyway.  

Jin Zixuan had done his best to like his new brother – upstanding war hero that he was – but he couldn’t quite manage it. He was too familiar with people who came to him with gentle smiles that hid daggers, and his mother, while far too vicious, was unfortunately right that those who shared his parentage all seemed to have their eyes fixed firmly on his position.  Jin Guangyao might pretend that he didn’t, but some of the moves he’d made were a little too obviously meant to be consolidations of power: courting the Qin girl, being friendly with certain dissatisfied factions…

Jin Zixuan heard that Jin Guangyao had once been Nie Mingjue’s deputy, wearing a façade of righteousness, and their current enmity had been birthed once the other man had seen what he was really like.

It seemed like a bad trade to him, scrabbling for scraps in Lanling instead of being respected as a man in Qinghe, but he supposed he was in no position to judge. He’d had all the advantages in the world given to him at his birth, and he’d still taken so very long to figure out that righteousness was actually worth something by itself.

His father was still ranting about Wei Wuxian, with his half-brother indulging him with nods and questions that didn’t achieve anything other than making his father feel good about himself for having guessed right, and eventually Jin Zixuan was sick enough of it to feel the need to divert the conversation.

“Whatever his motives may be for marrying Wei Wuxian,” he said, “surely those reasons don’t apply to Hanguang-jun, who possesses no secret power to be obtained. It’s not as though the Nie sect needs a connection to the Lan sect – Chifeng-zun is already sworn brothers with Zewu-jun.”

He paused, deliberately, then added, as if in afterthought, “And A-Yao, of course.”

Jin Guangyao might have mastered the ways of the mistress, sweetness and support and indulgence to win favor, but Jin Zixuan had grown up with a mother that had never allowed an infamously straying husband to bring home a single concubine – if Jin Guangyao thought a few tricks were enough to get his position, he was only dreaming.

Jin Zixuan would help him wake up.

-

“Do you think it’s that he doesn’t like A-Xian enough to marry just him?” Jiang Yanli asked, biting her lip, but her husband shook his head with a laugh.

“My father couldn’t think of a reason either,” he said, looking arrogant and smug in that charming sort of way he had when he was happy. “The only thing he could come up with after hours and hours was that he might be some sort of pretty flower vase meant as a consolation for having to marry the Yiling Patriarch.”

“But you don’t think that.”

“Of course not. Chifeng-zun is a good man, and even if he wasn’t, he’s old friends with Zewu-jun, who would never allow anything like that.”

Jiang Yanli conceded the point, but that still didn’t explain why. She’d known, of course, of Jiang Cheng’s desperate gamble to protect Wei Wuxian and keep him in the Jiang sect in some manner – technically not, since he’d be under the protection of the Nie sect going forward, but this way at least made sure that he’d always have his family backing. She’d even hoped, based on some things Jiang Cheng had said to her, that Wei Wuxian was happy with the marriage, looking forward to it.

But why would Nie Mingjue take a second wife – no, another first wife – at the same time? Wasn’t that looking down at her brother?

“Personally, my theory is that he just didn’t want to get cuckolded,” Jin Zixuan said, playing with her hair. “So he took precautions against it.”

“Cuckolded?” she asked, and she could feel him turn red – her husband was sensitive about such things, a remnant of his unhappy childhood. He was terrified that she might start to suspect him of crimes he hadn’t yet committed (as if he wasn’t a terrible enough liar that she’d know at once anyway if he’d really done anything), and he usually avoided any discussion of infidelity like the plague. She wasn’t letting him off this time, though, not if Wei Wuxian’s happiness was at stake. “What do you mean? A-Xian wouldn’t betray someone he’d sworn himself to.”

Not without a good reason, anyway. The way Wei Wuxian had been behaving recently towards Jiang Cheng – towards the Jiang sect generally, especially after the business with the Wen sect remnants – could almost make her think terrible things, and only the fact she loved her brother as blindly as she did could make her unswerving in her faith that there was some purpose behind his seemingly cruel behavior.

“Probably not,” Jin Zixuan agreed. “But I mean – come on. I didn’t notice it when I was younger, because I was an idiot back then –”

He said it, not her.

“– but Wei Wuxian chased after Lan Wangji the entire time we were at the Wen indoctrination camp together. Same way I chased after you, actually.”

“With no grace or tact or knowledge of women?” she teased, and he blushed and rubbed his cheek against hers.

“Well, yes,” he said. “But I got you in the end, didn’t I?”

That was a good point.

Jiang Yanli hadn’t seen them interacting enough to really judge – convention separating men from women the way it did – but Wei Wuxian had spoken of Lan Wangji rather a lot after his time studying in the Cloud Recesses. It was certainly a plausible guess.

“So you think Sect Leader Nie married Hanguang-jun for what reason?” she asked. “To keep A-Xian from pursing him?”

“Common wisdom in Lanling says that if it’s not to create connections, then there’s only two reasons for a man to take a concubine,” Jin Zixuan said with a shrug. “One is to keep the man company – the other’s to give company to his wife.”

Jiang Yanli’s eyebrows shot up. “Company for his wife?”

“Why not? Men and women move in different circles – if a man is worried his wife might be thinking of looking for company outside, it’s better to get her someone who will be by her side all the time, isn’t it?”

Jiang Yanli covered her mouth to hide her laughter. “I suppose so,” she said. “Please don’t get me company in the future, though; I’m quite capable of making friends on my own.”

“And I,” her husband said, perking up at once, “of keeping you too busy to even think about other company –”

-

“You really think it’s all right?” Jiang Cheng asked Jiang Yanli. He trusted his sister’s judgment, but he was still worried. “I don’t want Wei Wuxian to think he has to suffer in silence –”

Jiang Yanli patted his shoulder. “A-Cheng, think about what you’re saying. I’m not saying A-Xian wouldn’t suffer, but – in silence?”

“If he thought it might hurt one of us he would,” Jiang Cheng said stubbornly. “This was my idea, and you know he’s worried about messing up your relationship with Jin Zixuan by starting too much trouble, especially with the Jin sect being the first one to jump down his throat about it. And anyway, he wasn’t chasing after Lan Wangji! He was – he –”

He frowned. He’d always thought that they disliked each other – certainly Lan Wangji’s constantly cold expression didn’t suggest he enjoyed Wei Wuxian’s teasing, although Wei Wuxian did spend an awful lot of time planning out pranks centered around Lan Wangji in specific. Or even, as Jiang Yanli had pointed out, just talking about him.

Which he did. A lot.

“What if Lan Wangji doesn’t like him back?” he asked, suddenly consumed with a brand new worry. “If Chifeng-zun goes to all that trouble for Wei Wuxian, and gets his hopes up, and then it turns out that Lan Wangji really doesn’t like him –”

“I’m sure Sect Leader Nie must have thought it over carefully before he took any action,” Jiang Yanli said. “A-Xuan tells me that he’s a good person, a good leader, and a good general – he must have a plan. Don’t you think?”

“Well, he is all that,” Jiang Cheng admitted. He wouldn’t have been so confident in his plan to marry Wei Wuxian into the Nie sect if Nie Mingjue hadn’t been as righteous as his reputation. But still…

“Why don’t you see what Wei Wuxian thinks about it?” she suggested, quite reasonably. “And anyway, he’ll still need a chaperone for their next visit, and the seasonal floods are over – you could go supervise.”

Jiang Cheng brightened. His older sister always had the best ideas. “What would I do without you?” he asked, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek.

She laughed. “Starve, probably. Would you like some more soup?”

“Of course! Remind me, why am I letting you go off to Lanling again..?”

[lifblogs]

Get Lost More Often

1915 words, read on ao3

Anakin decided he was an idiot. He wished he had come to that conclusion before taking a hike around Lake Louise in Banff National Park and getting lost. Obi-Wan had warned him against it, but he’d wanted to go anyway. And here he was, freezing his ass off on his way up a peak. Why did he need to climb his way up instead of returning to Fairmont Château where there’d be a nice cozy bed, and hot chocolate, and one of those electric fireplaces? The wind had had the audacity to snatch his map out of his hands, so now he had to get up high to make sense of his surroundings. Hopefully if he made it to the top he’d be able to see the hotel and plan a route back in his head.

It wasn’t that Anakin wasn’t smart. He just did reckless things from time to time. Okay, all the time.

Anakin stopped his hike upwards, and tried to find the best path to continue onward. Right now the ground was becoming more rocky than ever, giant boulders clustering together. He realized it was the perfect shelter for a predator like a lynx or a cougar, and unfortunately there were quite a few of those. But he figured he’d smell one before he was in danger. Maybe. A very tentative maybe. And then there was the off chance that some other large animal would bother him.

He cursed himself as he grabbed hold of a rock and started to climb, his durable hiking boots thankfully helping him scrabble upward. Through the lush greens of the conifers he was able to see a gap, and past them, down, down, down was the lake: all a brilliant aqua that would surely kill him within fifteen minutes of submersion.

Despite being lost and bitterly cold the trip was still worth it just to get a look at that extraordinary glacier melt.

A twig cracked, and Anakin scrambled up and over the rock. He turned, but nothing caught his eye.

Probably a squirrel. Hopefully a squirrel.

Rather than staying in one spot he had his eyes roam all around for at least a minute. He spotted movement in a tree, and was surprised that it was a lot of movement, a branch making a loud thwack as it snapped back into place. Right above that branch was a black furry mass clambering up the trunk.

Closer inspection showed it to be a black bear.

If you let a black bear know you were there and proved that you were big it was relatively harmless. So Anakin stood to his full height, waved his arms, and shouted a greeting at it.

The bear startled, and nearly fell out of the tree, which set Anakin laughing. And then it was on its way.

Anakin had to be on his way now too, taking note of the lengthening shadows. He did not look forward to the idea of being stuck out here at night.

“Just keep climbing,” Anakin told himself as he took to a rocky path through the thinning trees. “Find the hotel.”

~~~

“He should’ve been back by now,” Obi-Wan told the small young woman in front of him.

He had gone to one of the lodges near the hotel that had local rescue and rangers. The woman he was speaking to was short and slim, and had her brown hair up in a bun. A few curls had come loose. She seemed all business in her brown ranger’s uniform, yet she had come out from behind her desk to comfort him.

Obi-Wan was stroking at his beard, anxious from Anakin’s absence. The woman whose name tag read Padmé Naberrie had a reassuring hand on his arm as he gave her all the information he could about his friend.

“I’ll find him,” she assured him, and then she set to work, gathering gear, relaying information, getting someone to cover the desk.

Obi-Wan sat in one of the beat-up handmade wooden chairs.

Oh, Anakin. Why are you always like this?

This vacation had been Anakin’s idea. Obi-Wan would’ve preferred somewhere warmer, and had thought that’s what Anakin had in mind when he used the word exotic. Heading north to try and see all of Canada’s lakes had, however, been how Anakin defined the term. So instead of relaxing at a beach or even just inviting his friend Cody over for drinks, he was here, waiting for Padmé to head out so Anakin could be found.

When she seemed about ready, a heavy backpack hoisted on her shoulders, Obi-Wan grabbed his own pack.

“I’ll go with you,” he offered.

“No offense, but you’ll only slow me down.”

“But I’m strong,” Obi-Wan argued. “And I can move quickly if need be. Please, I just want to find my friend. He’s like a brother to me.”

She eyed him, probably trying to figure out just how muscular he was under his jeans, flannel, and fleece-lined jacket.

“Fine,” she relented. “But there are two rules and two rules only: do exactly as I say, down to the letter, and follow my footsteps about four to five feet back.” Obi-Wan frowned in confusion at that last one, and despite the seriousness of the situation, her brown eyes seemed to glimmer with amusement. She started leading him out, as she offered further explanation: “You don’t want to get hit with the branches that snap back after I pass.”

“Right.”

Padmé led him over to a large all-terrain truck, and once they got in, they headed out.

“So tell me about Anakin,” Padmé inquired.

Obi-Wan did, even as the road became dirt and then their path took them off of it, the vehicle bumping along and jostling them inside.

~~~

Anakin reached the summit of the peak, but there was a slight problem: it was sundown. Sure, he could see the hotel, but traveling there in the dark? Maybe he could stay here. He had a flashlight, he had plenty of back-up batteries. And there was a bigger problem than the dark and cold if he decided to travel. From what he could tell with where the hotel was positioned, he’d have to hike across grizzly territory, or risk taking a much longer route and getting lost yet again.

~~~

I wonder how Obi-Wan’s doing with looking for me.

There was no doubt his friend was looking for him, or had gotten someone to help. He was just like that: always caring, always ready to save Anakin’s ass despite his feigned reluctance.

Then he had a better idea than traveling in the dark and lower temperatures. He could make a signal fire. So Anakin set to work, and in fifteen minutes he had a decent fire going. Now all he could do was sit and wait, he supposed.

Anakin settled down onto the ground, and then started in on the water and energy bars he had in his pack.

“There, did you see that?” Obi-Wan asked, pointing at a flicker of orange light that was up high in the darkness.

He and Padmé had been traveling on foot for some time now, Obi-Wan following her lead because he had no idea how she was able to figure out where Anakin had been, though he noticed she’d often travel back and forth in straight lines, doing that for many yard sometimes, until she’d hurried them on. Despite his worries for Anakin he liked being in her presence. He trusted her, and he wasn’t totally sure why. Maybe it was her sure and steady demeanor, and the calm, reassuring way she spoke to him.

“Yep,” she told him. “Come on.”

Anakin wasn’t sure how long he sat there, working on deep breathing to calm his nerves every time he heard something moving, which was near-constant. The night was loud with all kinds of night-time creatures, and it left him uneasy. He huddled closer to the blazing heat of the fire, pulling his jacket tight around him, and shoved his hands into his armpits. Eventually, he heard steps clumping against the ground, branches and undergrowth rustling, rocks clattering.

Eventually it grew so close that he was on his feet.

Stupidly, he asked, “Who’s there?”

Turned out it wasn’t so stupid after all because next thing he knew there was a petite woman in a ranger’s uniform stepping into the light of his fire.

Anakin let out a breath of relief, which was cut off in an excited shout as Obi-Wan stepped out from behind her.

“Are you alright? Are you hurt?” the ranger asked.

He grinned at her, beyond relieved by her presence. “I’m fine. Mostly just cold and hungry.”

Obi-Wan put an arm around him. “Come on, let’s get you back.”

The ranger said, “You know, you really shouldn’t travel out here alone.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And you should’ve had a map.”

“The wind took it.”

“Better to stick to a trail.”

“I got that… now.”

But Anakin was too happy at being found to be annoyed. He was actually glad that she clearly cared.

All conversation that didn’t have to do with getting back to civilization died down.

A few hours later—hours of pain-stakingly making their way down the peak and around the lake with only the  light of their flashlights—they came to an open area where there was a large truck parked on the dirt.

“Nice ride,” Anakin commented, as he climbed in, Obi-Wan relinquishing the passenger’s seat for him.

Anakin had expected something a bit clipped from the ranger, but to his surprise she grinned at him.

“Want to see how fast it can go?”

Anakin soon had a look to mirror hers. “Hell yeah.”

They set off, the night racing past them.

“Not to be a downer, Padmé,” Obi-Wan cried, “but hitting something and overturning this isn’t really what I had in mind!”

“Relax,” Anakin told him.

“Relax? You were missing all day.”

“Yeah, and I’m here now.” He turned to his savior. “So, Padmé, is it?”

“Yep.”

“Pretty name.”

“I could say the same for you.”

He laughed. “But at least you have the prettier face.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that.”

“No?”

“Well… maybe. But hey, maybe I should get lost more often.”

“Do you two mind flirting later?” Obi-Wan asked.

Padmé flashed Anakin a secretive smile that left a giddy feeling soaring through his stomach.

~~~

When they made it back to the lodge, Padmé gave Anakin her number.

“What are you doing up here anyway?” she asked him as she handed him the slip of paper.

“Exotic vacation. Wanted to see all of Canada’s lakes.”

“That’s ambitious.”

Looking her up and down and liking what he saw he responded, “I’m an ambitious kind of guy.”

“Great, then take me out with you next time. Or we could do something else. Are you staying at the Fairmont?”

“You bet!”

“How about I see you there tomorrow night for dinner?”

“Can we do dessert too?”

“Only if you’re thinking about the same dessert I am.”

“Hell yeah, I am.”

She gave him a quick embrace and kissed his cheek before saying, “Great, it’s a date.”

“It’s a date!” Anakin called as he left, getting into Obi-Wan’s car.

“You got her number, didn’t you?” Obi-Wan asked.

“Sure did.”

“I’m getting exiled tomorrow night, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are.”

Obi-Wan sighed, and rolled his eyes, and then pulled out onto the road. “I swear, you’re going to be the death of me, my young friend.”

[radramblog]

Rating the letters of the alphabet

I feel like part of my style of comedy is just rambling about shit and making loose connections between things as part of an overall bit. I think. I’m no expert on myself, unfortunately.

The inspiration for the following absolute load of shite is trying to search Tiermaker for nothing. Like, no characters in the search bar. Didn’t come up with anything. Did a search for just a space. No dice. What about just a? Surely that’ll bring up everything with an A in the title. But it didn’t, and I was somewhat disappointed.

Then my head started writing bits about letters and that’s how we got here. This is probably really stupid, but maybe it’ll at least be fun. Wordplay is cool, though maybe not my strong suit? Anyway.

A: A is one of the two letters that’s also just a word, as you’ve just seen, giving it a necessary promotion in rank. Not a lot of things get to double up like that, though with the “an” ligature maybe it’s actually a double or nothing. But because of the confusing common connection crossing contexts for the character, it gets somewhat awkward to talk about the letter in conversation. An A, in my opinion, A does not get. 4/5.

B: B is also just a word letter but unlike A when you write it out you have to stick a few extra letters on to make it work, making it not as good. But B’s association with bees isn’t enough, because in the year of our lord, like, 2019 or something, it would become inextrixably linked with shite memes as the B emoji became king. And I just don’t respect that. It’s otherwise a fine letter, dragged down by its company. 2/5.

C: Oh come on now, the word doesn’t even have a C in it anymore! You can sea the see without any of our tertiary letter’s involvement whatsoever. Not to mention how its two main sounds are just copies from other letters wholesale. C must be confusing to non-english speakers, I’d imagine. C as a grade gets what C as a grade typically entails for many a schoolchild. 3/5.

D: It would be remiss of me not to give a sterling grade to the D. Why, none of us would be here without it. While many a youth may find the D to be quite a humourous subject, I assure you I’m taking it with the gravest of sincerity when I say the D has got to be one of the best letters of all.

And by D I mean deity, of course. Wait, what did you think I meant? 5/5.

E: The absolute absurdity that is the E meme elevates E efficiently enough to excel beyond many another vowel. However, it is also the single most common letter in the English language, going so far as to open the damn name. It’s to the point where someone made a point of writing an entire book without using it, and I think Gadsby is cool but mayhaps avoiding fifth uncial was a bit showy. I can’t help but mark it down for the sake of hipster cred. 3/5.

F: F is for Fuck. I like the word Fuck. F is for paying respects. I think the military-industrial complex has poisoned our cultural landscape to the point that a reference to one of its most prized productions’ awkward moments has become one of the most colloquially used meme letters in existence, And That’s Terrible. 3/5, I’m conflicted.

G: Man literally who the fuck cares about G. What is it even good for. Just an absolute waste of a letter, total shithouse. It’s NATO equivalent is Golf, the Worst Sport, too. Who asked for any of this? Just use a J instead, it’s cooler. 1/5.

H: I’ve seen “Hhh” used enough times in written forms of pornography to not consider it a Horny Letter. That and it, being short for Hentai, is often used to denote adult material in Japan. Basically what im saying is, I think this gets worse the less sex-positive you are. 6/9.

I: I think I’ve said enough about letter words already, but I is another high-tier one because like A I is just it’s own thing. It can also, however, be a bit confusing, looking just like an l a lot of the time, and having to constantly capitalise it is a pain in the ass. I also don’t have a particularly high opinion of myself, so a high opinion of I seems disingenuous. 3/5.

J: Clearly the best letter, hands down. I’m definitely not biased. There are so few letters as underappreciated by J- a fact many a person who’s had to do that “assign yourself an alliterative adjective” icebreaker game has had to reckon with. Because it appears to be a lot more popular with names than with words, and that just kind of sucks. 6/5.

K: K has in some circles managed to bump off its partner to become yet another letter word, though in a very informal abbreviated sense. However, when you’re looking into scientific fields, eventually said partner returns, having lost some weight on the trip down to absolute zero. This all makes complete sense in my head, and I’m sure is a lot less funny to anyone who doesn’t live there. 4/5.

L: I’d argue that L doesn’t cop its namesake. It’s a really useful letter, loads of words use it, especially in pairs, and my ADHD-brain thought it was fun to just say LLLLLLLLLLL for a bit while I was thinking about this so I guess that’s staying in now. Put me down as an L Lobbyist. 4/5.

M: Mmmmmm. M&Ms. But also it’s kind of a pain to write. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. 3/5.

N: I’d like to fight whoever decided we should have two letters that sound so similar right bloody next to each other in the alphabet. Actually, who the fuck even decided the alphabet’s order to begin with? Maybe it should go M to N, that’ll bloody show you. 2/5.

O: Our fourth vowel, and perhaps one of the underappreciated ones. O is similarly a letter word, but a much more common one considering its use as an interjection. It’s also one half of a very powerful letter combo, as we’ll see. 4/5.

P: There’s the other half. Many a joke involves OP as a phrase, whether it mean overpowered or original poster, and the letters’ adjacency is a lovely bit of serendipity. Whenever I say P out loud, on its own, I have to resist the urge to do some incredibly shitty beatboxing, which may or may not be a good sign. 4/5.

Q: I was going to write some very harsh words about Q, and its dependency on U, but then I realised that that is probably hate speech against the disabled. It still sucks, though. 0/5.

R: R is the one I am most struggling to think of things to say about. R is another letter that’s just kinda there. I’m sure the Roberts and Rachels of the world would disagree with me, though. It’s also the name of a program that I know has traumatised a lot of young biologist wannabes, slapping us with a whole pile of maths and statistics when we just wanted to look at cool plants and shit. Or in my case, cool cells and shit. 2/5.

S: The most overrated consonant, but also the thing that makes plurals not a pain in the ass. However I’m going to lean towards giving S a positive rating, if only because it’s associated with snakesssss (and serpentine characters who can talk) and I like those. 3/5.

T: I don’t think T gets enough credit as one of the pillars of the English language. A lot of very common words feature it, and yet it feels like it never gets the same level of credit as big shots like S or half of the vowels. T is like the character actor of the alphabet, is basically what I’m saying. 4/5.

U: Ah, the letter Americans hate for some reason. I think this is actually commentary on the history of American politics. Because throughout history, America has been extremely selfish and self-centered, while attempting to present a positive image that people are finally seeing past. They only entered WWI and WWII when it was convenient for them, they started wars and initiated coups in even their allies for petty ideological reasons, and they’ve gone to war with several countries and funded wars with several others seeming just for shits and giggles. Because apparently if you’re not an American, then you’re not one of them, and that means they hate U. 4/5.

V: I actually think V is underrated. It’s a fun sound. That’s it, no joke here. It’s neat, I like it. 4/5.

W: This may come as a shock to you, but double-u over here is actually two Vs! unless you’re writing in cursive, but fuck cursive. The French actually have it right on this one, naming it double-v (pronounced doobleh-vay). Add in the fact that it’s literally just M upside down, and you’ve got a pretty shite letter. 1/5.

X: There’s a reason literally every “A is for Apple” thing you see made for kids uses Xylophone for X, and that’s because there are no commonly used words that start with it. Seriously, it’s all just scientific terms- I’d argue X-Ray is more common than Xylophone in common parlance, but also, who wants to explain imaging to a kid. It doesn’t even get a second page of words on Dictionary.com. X also has implications as a letter word, that I’d rather avoid at the moment. 2/5.

Y: Ah, Ygreck, everyone’s favourite “what the fuck, France?” moment. Between that and being sorta kinda not really a vowel, Y prompts its own question more often than I’d care to admit. 2/5.

Z: As a (technical) member of the generation associated with this letter- on the one hand, I’m sorry, on the other, y’all have it coming. The final letter of the alphabet, one of the other ones worth 10 in scrabble (and yet X isn’t???), and one we probably got pretty sick of in the early 00s when it was everywhere- ironically, when most of the generation was getting born. 2/5.

And that’s the lot of them. I hope this didn’t alienate any non-English speakers too hard. It’s probably fine.

Join me for more bullshit next time I have another stupid idea. I mean, tomorrow.

[florenceandthemachine]

talk to me about stiles and jackson sharing clothes. jackson, who has never worn anything that isn’t designer, in stiles’ flannel shirts from walmart because they smell like him and they make him feel close to stiles when they’re apart all day at school. and stiles in jackson’s preppy little button-ups and his leather jackets, feeling a little ridiculous at first, but melting every time jackson grins and pulls him in for a hungry, possessive kiss :’)

It starts, like so many big things do, in a small way. 

They didn’t have a lot of opportunity to do something as simple as switching a shirt when they were in high school. They got together in their junior year, around Christmas break (in a way that both romantic and heartfelt and adorable, but that’s a tale for a different time) but all of the regular cute couples things were somewhat out of the question for them.

Date nights weren’t watching movies or going out to eat, they were fighting villains and dodging bullets.

Study breaks were spent scrabbling for any information on the newest mythological beings, not rewarding one another with kisses after mock SAT questions.

And Jackson felt a pang of irritation whenever a normal human couple did anything like wear a matching outfit in his visual range, because when it came to clothing, his concern was finding anything that was free of blood, tears, or other supernatural goop—not being cute with his boyfriend. He was... a little bitter about that particular path of things, honestly.

On a game day, for example, Stiles couldn’t sit in the stands and wear Jackson’s jersey and cheer him on, because he was wearing his own jersey, on the field, getting cheered on himself.

There was no point in giving Stiles his letter jacket to wear, because Jackson had bought him his own (and while he was livid with his own stupidity in missing that opportunity, the low thrum of pride Stiles gave off whenever he wore it, no matter how hard he denied it, would always be worth it to Jackson).

Hell, even after late night sleepovers, they still stuck to their own wardrobe; Jackson was broad while Stiles was stick thin, and Stiles was lanky where Jackson was lean, so it was only comfortable to stick with what they had.

—

The summer before senior year, though, everything changed.

Mostly because Stiles disappeared for two weeks.

(It was way more than that, he insisted, it was closer to six months than two weeks; but when he mentioned that, he could hear Jackson’s heart actually break, and he had long since given up trying to figure out how time worked in different dimensions.)

Once he rejoined the land of the living, the first thing Jackson did (after refusing to let Stiles out of his sight for days and crying, quietly, which wouldn’t have been funny in the best of times) was teach him how to fight. Stiles was already apt with his baseball bat, a lacrosse stick, and a handful of mountain ash, so Jackson took it on himself to teach Stiles all of the dirty tricks he had learned from Derek and Scott—he basically gave Stiles his own werewolf how-to, and wasn't satisfied until even Derek noticed how strong he was getting.

The second thing Jackson did, which he absolutely did not tell anyone about and had every intention on keeping this himself, was steal three or four undershirts from Stiles gym bag and keep them in the back of his closet. It helped him, loathe as he was to admit it, to have a ready-source of Stiles scent on the rare nights they were apart. 

Stiles, the nosy fucker, found out almost immediately. 

Jackson was rendered speechless as Stiles pulled out the undershirts, his face beet read and mouth clamped shut, and his heart sunk as Stiles left the room, his face going from beet red to sheet white, and he stumbled over himself trying to chase Stiles down, worst case scenarios running through his mind, stealing Stiles clothing was weird, he knew it was weird, he was so stupid, why did he—

He was so caught up in his mind that he almost tripped over Stiles, who had not run from the house in disgust (the relief Jackson felt was palpable) but instead was rooting through his backpack.

He was silent as he stood up, one of Jackson’s ridiculously expensive watches in his fingers, and Jackson’s mind was stuck in a reboot until Stiles spoke, taking his turn to go beet red. 

“I get it. I, uh, I stole the heaviest one out of your drawer, the weight is... comforting? I guess? I don’t know, it’s so weird, I’m so sorry,but I know you don’t wear them anyway. It just... I thought that if I got taken again, I would have still had this, from you, so I wouldn’t forget you.”

The old Jackson would have snarked that yeah, it’s the heaviest watch he owns because it’s a fucking platinum built Rolex Daytona, there are custom diamonds in the watch face, it cost more than his Porsche so give it the fuck back right now before you scratch it.

This Jackson didn’t have a chance to say any of that, because he was busy wrapping Stiles in his arms, whispering that no matter what happened, Stiles would never be taken from him ever again. Another truly embarrassing moment, at least it would have been if Stiles wasn’t clinging back to him just as hard. 

—

Things are... better after that. But even Jackson can admit, the bar was fucking low.

Stiles had filled out in his time... away. His shoulders were broader and while he was still built for speed, he was no longer swimming in any of Jackson’s clothes—and even better, Jackson had an easier time getting his scent fix from Stiles when he could actually fit into Stiles shirts (instead of just burying his face in them, late at night when he was alone, rutting into his mattress like a bitch in heat). 

Jackson looked surprised in himself the first time he shrugged on one of Stiles long sleeved, flannel monstrosities, the softness of the fabric a pleasant surprise against his skin. 

Stiles, on the other hand, was a mess. The colors made Jackson just look so... soft, so good, and even as his heart swelled his mouth was going a mile a minute, because how dare Jackson look so good in one of his shirts, the same shirt that even Scott said made him look like a giant dork, the audacity, the fucking nerve—

He shuts up quick when Jackson crowds into his space, hands on his hips.

“Stiles, it only looks good on me because it’s something you love. I look my best when I feel like I’m yours. I look... no, I am my best when I’m with you.”

And, hell, even if Stiles wanted to argue with that, he couldn’t find his voice. 

—

Jackson gains a knack for blending their wardrobes after that, matching up one of Stiles heavy flannels with his own thousand dollar jeans, or walking around his house in one of Stiles jerseys over his boxers. 

Stiles isn’t... as comfortable as Jackson is to start.

He still has Jackson’s watch, and he wears it almost every day. Jackson may have superhuman speed and senses, but there is something about that consistant weight, right on his pulse point, that helps him head off many a panic attack before they arise.

He develops a habit of tapping against the face of the watch with his free hand. Jackson looks concerned at first, but when he brings it up, Stiles just blushes and says “oh, uh. I don’t know, I was just thinking of you is all.”

It’s all Jackson’s fault that their late for fourth period after that, because he basically drags Stiles to the nearest janitor closet to cover himself in Stiles scent in a decidedly sexy way.

Overall, Jackson wants to push—he really, really does—but he knows well enough not to. He knows that Stiles treats his many many layers as a defense in the same way Jackson had hid behind his own glamour and flashy personality, so even though he would give his left leg to see Stiles in one of his well worn jackets or even a jersey, he bides his time.

For once in his life, fate seems to be on his side, because he doesn’t have to wait long. 

—

They make the determination early on to try and experience as much humanity as physically possible in their senior year, and a staple of humanity was Lydias house parties.  Lydia had grown into herself as well (not that anyone other than pack would notice the difference), but her ragers were the social event of the lifetime, and Jackson and Stiles basically had standing invitations. 

This particular party was for something something Fall Homecoming Midterms something, Jackson wasn’t paying attention. Winter had come on a little early, and even though it was plenty warm when they showed up at the lake house, the temperature dipped by the time Lydia kisses them goodbye, and Stiles was shivering by the time they were halfway to the car. 

Jackson doesn’t even roll his eyes before he shrugs out of his jacket, which was more of an accessory than anything—werewolves always ran hot—and draped it over Stiles shoulders. 

Stiles, again, went red, his mouth clamping shut as he felt the leather on his skin, and Jackson finally felt confident enough (or maybe buzzed enough, Lydia was wicked with her wolfsbane punch once she had the ratio down pat) to mention it.

“It’s okay if you don’t like it.”

“What?”

“Seriously, Stiles. It’s okay if you don’t like wearing my things.”

Stiles just looked at him like he grew a second head, and Jackson let out a grunt as he shook his head.

“Come on, I’m not an idiot. I know it makes you uncomfortable. I can just start carrying another jacket for you in the car, and,” and he was thankful Stiles wouldn’t hear his heartbeat twitch, “and if it makes you that uncomfortable, I’ll stop wearing your clothes too.”

It would kill him, but he would, if that was what Stiles wanted.

To his credit, Stiles recovered quickly, squawking out his disapproval as he pulled Jackson aside, out of the path of some of the partygoers behind them.

“Baby, no. I love you wearing my clothes.” 

Jackson pretended that his entire body didn’t flood with relief. 

“Then what the fuck, Stiles? You think I wouldn’t love seeing you in my stuff too?”

“Jacks, that’s the fucking problem! I would... I would love it. Too much.”

Steady heartbeat. Jackson resisted the urge to call bullshit and waited for Stiles to continue.

“I... I love it, Jackson. I love wearing your jacket and I love wearing your watch, but it overwhelms me sometimes, even... even with something as simple as your jacket, I feel good. It feels so fucking good because it feels... it feels like I’m yours, but more than that. It literally makes me feel like I belong to you, and it feels so fucked up to love it as much as I do, but I do love it, and I love you, and I feel so guilty because it’s so creepy and I don’t want to be putting you in that position, and it scares me because the last time I felt like someone else had this much power over me I was killing my friends and—“

Jackson’s lips are on his in second, hungry and needing, but also giving Stiles the headspace to come down from his panic and inhale. Jackson has him pinned against the Porsche and Stiles fucking mewls, the blush blooming across his face and neck as Jackson finally comes up for air. His voice is panting, soft, hesitant but so hopeful when he speaks next.

“You don’t... think it’s creepy, or weird? You’re okay with this?”

Jackson growls, low in his throat, eyes flashing blue as he boxes Stiles in with his hips, letting Stiles feel how very okay with it he really is. When he speaks, his words are low, lisped through a mouth full of fangs.

“You. Are. Mine.”

The wave of relief he can smell wash over Stiles is like a tsunami, but stronger still is the deep scent of arousal, and Jackson opens the passenger door of the Porsche and all but throws Stiles inside as he bolts to the drivers side, fully prepared to break several laws on their way home.

At the end of the night, their clothes are strewn all over Jackson’s room, and Stiles is panting, sore and sweating and so, so happy, fingers bouncing along the metal watch band as Jackson pulls him close.

“I’m yours.” he murmurs as Jackson snuffs along his neck, still very much wolfed out, a possessive streak a mile wide taking root in Jackson’s brain as he tugs Stiles even closer. 

“Mine.” he repeats, for the thousandth time that night. “All mine.”

Things are quiet for a moment as Stiles feels a new level of happiness bloom, deep in his gut.

(Three days later, Stiles walks in to school wearing a henley that feels like it’s lighter than air, sitting just right to show off the sharp lines of his collarbone, and the edge of a hickey he wishes would never fade. Jackson joins him easily, wearing a Fantastic Four graphic tee shirt for fucks sake, hand sliding around Stiles’ waist in a possessive way that makes his entire body go fuzzy.

“Stiles?”

“Yeah baby?”

Jackson is grinning at him now, a predators smile that would be terrifying if it were anyone but Jackson.

“I love you too.”)

[steves-on-a-plane]

Wish You Were Here

Words: 1928 Pairing: None Cast of Characters:  Peter Parker and Reader Timeline: Post Endgame Summary: Reader is Tony Stark’s older daughter who was twenty five when she was snapped away along with Peter Parker and the others. After her father’s death she decides to “hack” into archived security footage just to hear her father’s voice again.  *This isn’t really a song fic, but some of the mood for this fic was inspired by Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd.

The room was somehow too hot and too cold at the same time. You were wearing a pullover hoodie, but you were also sitting under an air conditioner. The mix of temperatures gave you a nauseous feeling down to your stomach. That was the beauty, you supposed, of the not quite climate-controlled server room in the back of your family cabin. Though the term family was being used loosely here as your entire family had never all been at the cabin together.

You were sat on the floor with your laptop in front of you. It had taken you weeks to manage, but you’d finally figured out a way to access the archived security footage from the old Avengers’ Tower in New York and the old Avengers’ Compound in D.C. It had been a lot of work, even if your dad had never been good a coming up with secure passwords. But it was all worth it just to hear his voice again. You scrolled through the archive files looking for the oldest.

A crack of light flooded the room as someone opened the door to the server room. You had the sudden urge to hiss at the newcomer like a cartoon villain but decided against it in the last second. Everyone was already worried enough about you. Instead, you posed one hand on your laptop screen ready to slam the cover shut. You didn’t want anyone to know what you were doing. You looked up at the door to see Peter Parker standing there with a beanbag, a pillow and a blanket.

“[Y/N]?” He was justifiably surprised to see you there. “What are you doing?” He squinted into the dimly lit server room.

“I could ask you the same question, Parker.” You quipped.

“Right I, ahhh…” He stopped talking and looked around worriedly. “If I tell you will you promise not to tell anyone?”

“Yeah, I guess.” You sighed.

“Okay.” Peter stepped inside the server room and shut the door. “Sometimes when I have a hard time sleeping, I like to come in here. Something about the dim lighting, the hum of the servers, and the weird too hot-too cold…” He shrugged.

“I get it.” You nodded, closing your laptop. “Let me pack up and get out of your way.”

“Wait a minute, [Y/N]. What were you doing in here?” He asked.

“Nothing.” You lied trying to walk past him.

“[Y/N], C’mon. I thought we were friends.” Peter frowned.

“It’s not about you, Peter.” You sighed. “It’s…” You stepped closer to him so that you were glaring eye to eye with Peter. “If you tell anyone what I’m doing in here, I’ll kill you.”

“Oh. Uh…Okay.” Peter nodded. He’d never admit it but he was a little afraid of you.

“Okay. Put your beanbag down, Parker.” You pointed to the floor and Peter dropped it immediately. You sat back on the floor and invited him to join you. Peter flopped down onto the beanbag and waited. You took a calming breath to ease your nerves and opened your laptop. You then explained to Peter exactly why you’d been hiding in the server room.

“Oh, I should just leave you alone.” He scrabbled to his feet and frantically grabbed his pillow and beanbag.

“Sit down, Parker.” You groaned. You didn’t want to share your secret with anyone, but if you had to share you supposed you could with him. “He was yours too.”

Peter tossed his beanbag bag on the floor and sat down. You joined him, wrapping the blanket he’d brought around the two of you. You settled your laptop between you and made sure the computer was still plugged. Scrolling through the footage archive, you found the oldest dated folder. You opened the folder and selected a file labeled living room.

“There was no furniture brought in yet, but we sat on the floor and ate pizza together the night they installed the security cameras.” You explained. After a little fast forwarding you found the moment you were talking about.

You and your dad sat on the floor with a moving box in the middle of you. A soggy cardboard pizza box was balanced on top of the box. Your dad held out a slice of pizza to you. You pressed play and his voice was the first thing you heard.

“[Y/N], you have to eat some of this. I can’t eat three whole pizzas by myself.” Your father continued to push the slice towards you.

“How can you expect me to eat?” You sighed. “This place is huge! And kind of creepy.” Still you took the slice out of his hand, knowing he wasn’t going to stop shoving it in your face until you did.

“Creepy?” He feigned offense. “How could you find our new home creepy?” Tony stopped and looked around. The penthouse apartment of the Avengers Tower had eleven-foot ceilings. The living room’s east wall was largely made of glass, which gave a great view during the day, but at night he had to admit the city lights down below cast an eerie glow and for a new building the tower seemed to creek and hiss a lot. “Alright,” He conceded. “The place is a little creepy. But your Aunt Pep designed it, so, blame her.”

“Aunt Pep?” The real-life Peter Parker repeated with surprise. You’d been so drawn into the memory and of hearing your father’s voice again, you’d almost forgotten that he was seated beside you. Tears were already welling in your eyes, but you laughed at Peter.

“He’s talking about Pepper. This was before he was ready to admit that he was in love with her, but she’d been around my whole life. So she was always Aunt Pep to me.” You explained. “I had forgotten that I used to be creeped out by the old tower. Then again, I was seventeen. I was change in general back then creeped me out. Hey, you want to see if I can find the first time he told me about you? He was so excited…”

“You know, [Y/N],” Peter tried to choose his next words carefully as he watched you skim through years of security footage. “I really appreciate you sharing this with me, but I bet Morgan and Pepper would like to hear Mr. Stark’s voice again too.” You stopped scrolling and looked over at him.

“You promised not to tell anyone.” You reminded him very seriously.

“I-I know.” He stammered under your very Tony Stark-like gaze. “A-and I won’t I promise! I just think, when you’re ready, maybe we could put together some clips or something to show them?”

“Maybe.” You replied, not sounding sure. “Listen, I know that in the end he married Pepper and I know Morgan’s technically my sister, but I wasn’t here for any of that. I didn’t get to go to his wedding. I didn’t watch her grow up. I didn’t get to spend the last five years living here in this cabin away from everything else. Away from the Avengers and the Stark legacy and his high expectations. I wasn’t part of his perfect little family. Before the snap, our family was just me and him. And when he was still alive, I could handle sharing him with you or with Aunt Pep because I always knew that at the end of the day, I was his number one. It’s selfish to say aloud I know, but now that he’s not here, where do I stand in all of this?” The tears you’d been holding back finally came pouring out as you confessed your inner most thoughts to him.“You know? It’s like the last five years he had everything he wanted. The love of his life and this perfect little genius kid, who’s way smarter than I was at her age. And-and-I was gone and they, he, just moved on without me.”  

“Oh, [Y/N], no!” Peter pulled you into a hug. “You know Mr. Stark never forgot about us. I’ll prove it.” Peter let go of you to fumble for something in his pockets. “I’ve kind of been carrying this around ever since Morgan gave it to me, but maybe you should have it.” Peter pulled out a piece of yellow construction paper and handed it to you.

You unfolded the piece of paper and saw a serious of stick figures lined up together. On one side of the paper were three stick figures. The first was colored in the crayon equivalents of hot rod red and gold, it was labeled Daddy. The second had an orange ponytail and she was labeled Mommy. The third was drawn slightly smaller and had a crown on her head, she was labeled Princess Morgan (Me). There were a series of blue squiggly lines cutting vertically through the page separating the left and the right. On the right side of the paper there were only two stick figures. One had been colored in blue and red with spikey brown hair, it had been marked Petey. The other had been colored with your hair color, also in a ponytail. Your stick figure had a crown just like Morgan’s and she’d been marked Princess [Y/N].

“Turn it over.” Peter suggested. You did and found a note written by your father on the back.

“I knew it was only a matter of time, but Morgan finally asked about the photos around the house. She pointed to [Y/N]’s High School graduation photo and asked who it was. (By the way, [Y/N] I know if you were here right now, you’d be furious about that picture hanging right in the kitchen for anyone to see. I remember how much you hated having braces at that age, but I had to put it up because it reminds me of how right before Pepper took that photo you squeezed me so tight I almost couldn’t breathe.)

Anyway, I had to tell Morgan everything. I’m not sure she understood it all. Hell, I don’t understand it all myself. But the hardest part wasn’t talking about Peter and [Y/N], because I know that neither of them would ever want me to stop talking about them. They’d never want to feel like I’d forgotten them, even just for a second. No, the hardest part was when Morgan asked, “Daddy, where are Petey and [Y/N] now?” and I had to tell her “I don’t know, Baby.” Because I don’t. For all I know the two of you could be standing over my shoulder right now reading this letter. There’s no science to support it, but hey, who’s to say that snap didn’t just turn all of you invisible?

Morgan got real quiet after that and told me she was going to color. I was worried I’d traumatized her at three years old. (That’d be a new record for me.) She came back a little while later with this. She said, “I don’t know where [Y/N] and Petey are either and when we find them, we can take a new picture of us all together. But for now, we’ll have this to hang up instead.”

“Thank you, Peter.” You put the drawing down so that your tears wouldn’t smudge it. “I really needed that.” You blinked hard trying to stop your tears. “Ah, there’s a lot of footage here. Will you help me look through it and see what we can find to show Morgan and Pepper?”

“Are you sure?” Peter asked.

“He never let them forget about us.” You told him. “We need to do the same for him.”

[forever-rogue]

Supercut - VIII

Summary: Roger didn’t know how good he had it when Y/N was his. But when Y/N became Deacy’s, he realized he had messed up.

A/N: Hey, hi, hello, it’s me, ya girl, back (finallllyyy) with another part of this saga! I’m sorry it’s taken me forever, but between studying, taking the bar, and getting really sick (still sick woo), I just ddn’t have time to dedicate to this, and I wanted to give you all something quality. So please enjoy! xx

Pairing: Roger Taylor x Reader (former), John Deacon x Reader (current)

Warnings: infidelity, language

Word Count: 4.2k

Note - this is still in the past.

MASTERLIST

The First Time Roger Cheats

Playing with the napkin stretched delicately across her lap, Y/N cast an annoyed glance around the restaurant. The seat across from her was empty, utensils untouched, glass unfilled. Roger was late yet again.

She pondered how long she should wait for him before leaving. Glancing down at the ornate watch on her wrist, she realized it had already been nearing an hour. An hour of her sitting by herself and wondering if he would show up.

“Miss?” she was pulled out of her own thoughts as looked up and met the sympathetic gaze of the waiter. He looked nervous, probably hoping she wouldn’t snap at him. She forced a smile onto her face, “are you ready to order? Or still waiting?”

“I think I’m just going to go. It appears there’s been some sort of mistake,” she tossed the napkin onto the table, watching it plop there sadly, “I’m sorry for wasting your time. Do I owe you anything?”

“Don’t worry about it, Miss. I hope your evening gets better,” he gave her a small smile, and she just nodded; she hated when people pitied her. Keeping her head down, Y/N ducked out of the restaurant quickly, praying that no one saw the tears falling from her eyes.

It was probably silly to be so upset over something so trivial in the grand scheme of life, but it still stung. Roger had promised her he’d be there.

This wasn’t the first time he been date to one of their dates. Or the second. Or the third. She should have been used to it by now, but she always held up hope that he would change and make some sort of effort. It appeared that he never would.

Shrugging on her coat, she reached the nearest payphone. She wasn’t ready to go home and be alone and get too caught up in her own thoughts. It was a dark place sometimes, and not territory she wanted to enter on this dismissal evening. She knew exactly where she wanted to be.

Grabbing some spare change out of her pocket, she slipped the coins into the grimy old box, picking up the receiver gingerly. It had seen better days and she didn’t want to catch some weird disease on top of everything. She quickly dialed John’s number, gripping the cord tightly and hoping he was home.

Listening to the blaring ring for what seemed like an eternity, Y/N figured John must not have been home, and decided to abandon her efforts. Just before the receiver was put back into place, she heard a faint voice come through, “hello? Hello?”

“Deacy?” she asked quietly, hearing noise in the background. He wasn’t alone, “it’s Y/N.” “Hey! What’s up?” he asked before holding his hand over the receiver and shouting at someone in the background, “sorry about that. Bri and Freddie are over and they’re being right idiots. We’re playing Scrabble and drinking beers! They are going to get so crushed!”

“T-that sounds like fun,” she closed her eyes and imagined the three of them sitting around the table, all of them second guessing every questionable word, “I’m sorry I interrupted, I’ll let you go.”

“No, no, please don’t hang up! Why don’t you come over and join us?” he asked and her heart felt a little less heavy at his sweet words, “wait...aren’t you supposed to be on a date with Roger?”

“No,” she lied, biting her lip. If he wasn’t with her or with them, she wondered where he could be. Hopefully he’d just be crashed out at his place, drowsy with sleep, “that’s not tonight. I’ll be over soon then.”

“Perfect! I’ll get your spot ready and open a beer just for you,” he sounded so happy, and she felt like a lump was rising in her throat. She always ran to him when she needed help. But this time she couldn’t tell him, or Brian, or Freddie. Not when it was their other best friend involved, “see you soon, love bug.”

“See you soon,” she all but whispered. Hearing the click from his end, she followed suit, letting out a low sigh. Things were, and always had been, so easy with John. He lit up at the slightest sound of her voice, always smiling his signature gap toothed smile, his eyes crinkling in the corner. Sometimes she wondered is she had made a grave mistake. Maybe it should have been him all along.

Her hand perched on John’s door, she realized she probably should have gone home and changed first. They would surely ask questions when they saw her all dressed up, showing up for night in of scrabble. While she was musing if she should just run home quickly and change, the door opened and there stood John, waiting her intently.

“You’re here!” he exclaimed and threw his arms around her. She relaxed into his touch, feeling more comforted than she had in a long time, “we’re just getting ready to start a new round, what perfect timing!”

“You know I couldn’t resist a night with my best friends,” she stepped inside, immediately getting wrapped up by Freddie’s strong arms, “hello Fred, I see you’ve missed me.”

“It’s been too long-”

“It’s been five days-”

“Too long! Tell me, where has Roger been keeping you?” he chided her, taking her coat for her and ushering her into her usual spot. She bit her lip and just shrugged lightly, trying to play it coo, “is he not joining us? I dare say you’re dressed very exquisitely for a night of board games.”

“This old thing? It’s nothing, really. But, ugh, Roger’s not feeling well,” she tried to go with a simple lie and not give them all the sordid details. If she opened that floodgate, she’d be there for hours telling them about the all things that had happened between the two of them. All the missed dates, the long nights of arguments, all the little annoyances, “it’s just me. I hope that won’t put too much of a damper on your plans.”

“Huh,” Brian said as he handed her a beer, “he seemed okay earlier. I could have sworn he said something about you two going out this evening? La Rossa or something?”

“He must have been confused,” she could tell her voice was getting slightly higher as she lied, and tried to keep a straight face. It should have been so simple, she should have just told them everything, but couldn’t bring herself to do it, “it’s not tonight.”

“Y/N, is everything alright?” John asked gently, putting his hand on her knee and giving it a tight squeeze. It should have been him she thought to herself. She loved Roger though, and she knew that wasn’t a lie. Sometimes things got hard, but, by this point, she had convinced herself that Roger, and only Roger,  was what she had wanted, “you can tell us anything.”

“Everything’s peachy, Deacy,” she reassured him, giving him a tight lipped smile. He could see right through her - he always knew when something was wrong. But he wasn’t going to push her on it. She would come to him when the time was right, “but thank you guys for letting me join. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a Friday night than with you lot.”

“How did you even come up with that word!?” John stared incredulously at his curly haired best friend. Not only was it a double word score, but it was long, and therefore worth a ton of points. None of them would even have a chance of winning at this point, “are you hiding a dictionary under the table?”

Freddie quickly ducked his head under the table, narrowing his eyes as he looked at the lanky man’s lap. Brian just silently flipped him the bird, as Freddie chuckled, “I’m afraid he’s clean. Somehow he has all those words in stuffed in that big mop of curls.”

“Fine,” John huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. Freddie and Y/N just chuckled as they glanced glances, while he murmured under his breath - something about Brian being a cheat and a liar.

“I hate to do this to you all, especially you, Bri, since you came up with that lovely word, but,” Y/N smirked as she slowly laid down her tiles. With each letter, the boys leaned in closer, watching with shocked faces as she topped Brian’s score, “I believe that is the new high score.”

“How are you both doing this?” John was exasperated now, throwing his hands in the air. She just gave him a smug smirk as she shrugged her shoulders innocently, “you’re all liars and cheats. This is the last time I’m playing with any of you. Except Freddie.”

“Do you hear that Bri? That’s the sound of-” she was about to say a sore loser but the shrill ring of the telephone interrupted her, “the phone. Deacy, who’s calling you at this time of night?”

“I dunno,” he answered as he stood up, grumbling as he walked over the phone on the kitchen wall. He paused for a moment, letting out an annoyed sigh before picking up the phone, “Hello?”

“Who is it?” Bri called over to him, watching as John’s face went through several expression changes ranging from annoyed, to concerned, and confused.

“It’s Rog,” he said quietly, covering the mouthpiece and giving Y/N a questioning look, “he’s wondering where you’re at. Do you want to talk to him?”

Y/N felt Freddie and Brian’s eyes glued to her as her brain raced a thousand miles minute, trying to figure out what to do. Should she said just talk to him? What would they say if she refused to answer? Biting her lip, she slowly shook her head, indicating a clear no. All she said quietly was “just tell him I’m here and hang up.”

“Everything’s fine, Rog. Yeah, it’s me, Bri, and Freddie. Yes, she’s been here this whole evening,” she could tell from his strained voice that Roger was probably fuming and giving Deacy a hard time over everything. He cringed as he held the receiver from his ear, Roger’s voice coming through but unclear, “yes, I’ll tell her. Goodnight, Rog.”

John set the phone down, hands on his hips as he came slowly made his way back to over to them. He sat down slowly, letting out a long breath as he turned to Y/N, “what’s going on, Y/N?”

“What do you mean?” she asked quietly, focusing her attention on the remaining tiles in front of her. Brian and Freddie exchanged a few nervous glances.

“Roger just said he’d been trying to ring you for hours. And you weren’t at your apartment,” John sighed as he ran a hand through his short hair, “you said earlier that he wasn’t feeling well. But he made it seem like you had plans. Two very conflicting stories.”

“Darling, is everything okay?” Freddie was gentle as he put his arm around her, trying to pull her into a hug. She flinched out of his touch as she stood up, putting a hand nervously to her face, “Y/N?”

“Everything’s fine, I swear,” in her mind she said it in a reassuring tone, but out loud it sounded sad and tiny. John stood up, putting his strong hands on her shoulders, attempting to calm her down, “it’s just a bit of a misunderstanding. I should go.”

“Or you could stay a little longer,” his voice was low and warm, making her feel the tiniest bit better, “you don’t have to leave if you don’t want to.”

“I should though,” she insisted, giving him a half smile, “everything’s fine, don’t worry so much, Deacy. I’ll see you later. I had a good time with you three. Thank you.”

“If you need anything, just call us. We’re always here for you,” Brian gave her a small wave as she grabbed her jacket off the couch and quickly headed. Just before she closed the door, she gave the boys one last sad smile, not letting them get another word in.

Y/N grabbed her keys out of her purse, fumbling to find the right one for her door as usual. Before she could even reach for the door handle, she was stopped in her tracks by the sight of Roger sitting in front of her door.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were ever coming, pretty girl,” Roger said as he looked her up and down. He noted that she was dressed very nicely for what was seemingly a night in with the boys, “I’ve been here for over an hour.”

“Yeah? Well, I was sat, waiting for you in that restaurant for almost an hour,” she crossed her arms over chest. Two could play that game, “I was humiliated Roger! La Rossa is a nice restaurant and I was just sitting there, like a fool, by myself waiting for a man that was never going to show up.”

“Fuck,” he murmured under his breath as he anxiously ran a hand over his face, “that was tonight?”

“Yes, that was tonight,” she frowned at him. Sticking her key in the lock, she let herself in, a reluctant Roger following her in. He gave her a sad look but she wasn’t having it, “you promised this time. You’ve done this countless times and frankly, it’s getting really old. Instead of sitting there and feeling sorry for myself, I left. I called Deacy and ended up playing scrabble with him, Bri, and Freddie.”

“You could have called me to remind me!” he became flustered as he flopped down the couch, annoyed mostly with himself as he tried to control his temper. She stood there, giving him a surprised expression as he tried to pit this on her.

“No, Roger. That is not my job. I am your girlfriend not your keeper. It’s your responsibility, as a grown man, to be able to do things, simple things, such as remembering a date on your own!” she knew her voice was shrill, but she didn’t care at this point.

“Fine, so this is all my fault!” he shouted back at her, “it’s always my fault! Good old Roger, fucking everything up!”

“I never said that! Quit trying to make yourself the victim! I take responsibility for my actions, and if something is my fault, I’ll admit it!” she got closer to him, ready to fightt him on this. She wasn’t ready to let him get his way this time, “just man up and deal with it, Rog.”

“Wow, really, Y/N? Says the one who was so upset she went crying to Deacon? What did you tell them all? How I’m the worst person ever, how ruined everything?” he asked, wondering just how much the boys knew. He stood up and the two of them were just glaring at each other, their chests rising and falling rapidly with raggef breaths.

“I didn’t go crying to anyone,” her voice was low, and she wanted nothing more than for him to leave. She hated arguing with him. She just wanted things to be normal. She just wanted to love him, “and I didn’t tell them anything. I’m not like that, Rog, and you should know that. I told them you said you were feeling sick and we didn’t have a date. You ruined that yourself by calling Deacy. You know how that problem could have been solved? If you’d just remembered.”

“Fine,” he huffed, throwing his hands in the air, “look, I’m sorry, okay? I know I’m a shit boyfriend.”

“Where were you, Rog?” she asked quietly. She both did and didn’t want to know the answer. She didn’t know which desire was stronger, “tell me. Where were you? You weren’t with me or the boys. We saw your parents last weekend, and I know you didn’t have anything scheduled.”

“It’s nothing, Y/N,” he said firmly, avoiding her gaze, as he nervously swallowed the lump in this throat, “please just drop it.”

“If it’s nothing, then tell me,” she pushed him a little further, knowing he would eventually give in. She studied him and noticed that his lips were slightly plumper than normal. A scent clung onto him, a scent that she didn’t recognize as his or hers. The lightest of bruises covered his neck, “why are you avoiding the question?”

“Why are you making such a big deal out of nothing?” he sighed as he tried to push past her, but she grabbed his wrist and didn’t let him go, “Y/N.”

“Tell me, Roger. If it’s nothing you can tell me. You’re my boyfriend, we’re supposed to be able to tell anything,” her voice was small as she tried to keep from crying. She was almost positive she had her answer.

“Oh? Then tell me, girlfriend, why won’t you admit you’re in love with Deacon?” his voice was laced with venom as he turned to face her. Her mouth dropped open at the shock of the sudden question. She hadn’t been expecting that, “now you’re all quiet? I can see the way you look at him and the way he looks at you.”

“Because I love you, you stupid idiot,” she shouted back at him, a hurt expression on her face. He knew, how did he know? Even if she had never admitted it, even to herself, she knew the feelings for John were there. She had never even said them out loud though.

But she loved Roger. She knew she loved him too, just to what extent was the question. She struggled to bite back her tears, “I love you. I chose you, Roger. After all those time you tried to ask me out, I said yes. To you. And I still chose you every day.”

“Well, I love you too,” he sighed, wishing he could take back his words. He didn’t mean to upset her, he hated seeing her upset. But sometimes the words were hard to hold back. He still had that Taylor temper, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said quietly, and he threw his back, whether in annoyance or exasperation, she wasn’t sure. But she wasn’t wavering from getting an answer. It was the least she deserved, “tell me where you where. Please.”

“I’m sorry,” was all he choked as he looked back at her. His eyes were glassy and she knew what he meant. Unfortunately, the words were not foreign to her - several men in the past had told her the same things, “I’m so sorry, my love. It didn’t mean anything, I swear. It was an accident-”

“It was an accident?” she was somewhere between laughter and crying as she echoed his words. That was a new one.

“Y/N, I swear it was,” he said as he tried to pull her in his arms. A few hot spilled down her cheeks as she smacked his arm and took a step back from her, “baby, please.”

“No,” she all but whispered, “don’t call me that right now. Roger, how could you do this? You don’t just sleep with someone by accident. It doesn’t work like that! It’s not like slipping and falling. It takes effort to do that.”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen. She was just there, and I had a few drinks, and then next thing I knew-”

“So you were just out day drinking, met a girl, and fucked her?” his excuse was so pathetic. Once she said it out loud, it just made her laugh, a sad, strangled sound, “you know, Roger, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Why were you even drinking during the day? You had rehearsal earlier today and then what? You just went to the bar?”

“It was a meeting, honestly.”

“A meeting?” she scoffed, “where were the others then?”

“I was meeting with someone about my set up, it doesn’t involve the others,” he closed his eyes, regretting every single action he had taken. He shouldn’t have given in so easily. He should have known better.

“Huh, okay. But that doesn’t excuse any of this,” her vision was cloudy now, “I just...I don’t understand. Why? I’ve never asked you for much Roger, the only thing I’ve ever asked was that you don’t do this. Exactly this. And yet that’s what you did.”

“I’m so, so, sorry, my love,” he sunk down on his knees as he pleaded with her. He put his hands around her waist and held her close, his head resting on her hips. His voice was thick as he too starting crying, “I’m sorry. I didn’t...I shouldn’t done this. Please, please forgive me. I love you so much, Y/N.”

“Please leave,” she said quietly, trying to pry out of his iron grip, “I don’t want to be around you right now. You broke my heart, Rog.”

“Y/N, please-”

“I got up this morning, a smile on my face because of you. I spent my day excited because, getting all dressed up, because you promised to take me on a nice date. I sat there by myself, like an idiot, stood up again. Then you have the audacity to show up at my house, smelling like another woman and covered in hickies, trying to make me the bad guy?”

“I don’t even know how to begin to apologize,” he looked at her pathetically from the floor, his own face red and splotchy, “words cannot describe the magnitude of the mistake I made.”

“Then why did you do it?” she covered her face with her hands, “if you know it was wrong, then why? There’s a lot...a lot of steps to take in between seeing someone and having sex with them, especially if you know it’s wrong. You could have stopped yourself. If you wanted to have sex, you could have come to me. You know that! But you still chose to go through with your actions. Now we both have to deal with that.”

“Can you ever forgive me?” he looked at her with wide, innocent eyes, gnawing on his own lips, “please. I love you so much, Y/N.”

“Did you think about how much you loved me when you were fucking another woman?” she hissed at him, going over to door and hastily pulling it open. No more words came out of her mouth as just closed her eyes and pointed into the hallway, “or were you just busy thinking about chasing your own high the whole time? Whatever it was, I hope it is was worth it.”

“Y/N,” her name rolled off his tongue like a prayer, like it was the only thing he had left in the world, “please. Don’t leave me. I need you. I love you.”

“Just go,” she was almost begging him at this point. All she wanted was to be alone and have a good cry, “if you love me, even remotely, please go.”

He got up slowly, heading out the door at a languid pace, waiting for her to break the tension and tell him that she still loved him, “please say this isn’t over. Please, I’ll do anything.”

“I’m not making any promises right now,” she moved to close the door, “I’m not in the right headspace to be making any decisions right now.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow?” it was a last minute desperate plea.

“We’ll see,” was all she said as she closed the door, listening to it click shut before quickly locking the door. Keeping an ear at it, she listened for his retreating footsteps. After a few minutes, she heard Roger slowly leave, and she allowed herself to slid down the door, crying silently.

Her pity party was cut sort when she heard her phone start to ring, the noise seeming too loud in the sad, lonely apartment. Pulling herself up, she slowly made her way over to the phone, desperately hoping that it wasn’t Roger from a payphone.

“Hello?” she asked quietly, trying to keep her sniffling down.

“Y/N? What’s wrong?” it was John of course, just like clock work. Just like he knew.

“Nothing,” she lied, putting to keep herself calm, “nothing at all. What’s up? It’s a little late to be calling, isn’t it?”

“I wanted to make sure you got home okay,” he responded, a note of concern in his voice, “you were upset when you left. And you still sound...not so great. Are you sure everything’s fine, love bug?”

“Everything’s fine, Deacy,” the lies were coming easily now, “it’s just late and I”m tried.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes.“

“Call me if you need anything at all,” his voice was soft and sweet and she desperately wished he was there with her right now. He always knew just what to say, “Love you.”

“Goodnight John,” she murmured at him, hanging up before he could say anything else. Her heart was heavy with so many emotions, and confused feelings, her mind racing with a million different thoughts. It was all too much, and yet not enough, all at the same time. Right now all she wanted was sleep.

Maybe the world would look better tomorrow. Maybe.

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[lonelypond]

Moonlight Becomes You: Apocalypse Midnight Dance Party: Nico Protects

NozoEli, NicoMaki, KanaMari, Love Live, Love Live Sunshine, 2.5K, 3/?

Summary: Nico can't reach Eli while Maki realizes she's not where she wants to be.

Nico Protects

Nico was glaring at her phone...Maki Nishikino aka DJ Diamond Princess was on a two week tour of all the Ontario and Quebec hot spots. And so Maki was all over EVERYONE’S social media, in cute and huggy and air kissy poses with all the hot hot young female celebrities. Not that Nico cared. Not that the pictures were any good. Not that with the time difference and Nico’s insanely early morning shooting schedule for an actual live action show Nico had any time to do more than text and send selfies. Maki’s texts were usually rants about people wanting to take pictures and messing with her equipment or touching the vinyl. She was ready to stop being away from home. And Nico was ready to stop seeing her with so many women in so little clothing draped all over her.

Nico glanced at the clock. Maki would have usually texted something by now. And Eli should be done with Day Two of her weekend of dance at the Ohara on The Beach, getting the choreography down in 20 hours worth of dance sessions. Why wasn’t Eli back? Nico hopped up from the couch to check the kitchen calendar. Nope, another week until the full moon. So why wasn’t Eli home?

Quick text: Hey, Eli, did you get lost. Or meet a cute girl?

There was a reply.

“Sorry, I’m still busy.”

Nico frowned, “Sorry, you’re not Eli, WHY DO YOU HAVE ELI’S PHONE?

“Who is this?”

Nico hit call. The person on the other end actually answered so Nico only YELLED a little, “Who are you?”

There was a cough, and a shuffle, and a high silly voice and a muffled bark in the background that put Nico on alert. Then Nico heard a high voice giggle with the distance Eli’s phone on speaker would give. “Eli can’t come to the phone right now. She’s not feeling well.”

“Who is this?” Nico got quieter but sharper, “Tell me right now where Eli is or I’m calling the cops.”

Nico heard another voice, frazzled, “Mari, let me talk to her. Is this Eli’s roommate?”

“Yes.”

New person now had the phone. Her voice was a cool breeze compared to the previous. She switched the phone from speaker. “I’m Kanan. That was my wife. She likes to play jokes. I’m sorry but...”

Nico wasn’t that easy and cut off what she knew would be a lie from Kanan, “Where is Eli?”

“She isn’t feeling well. She had a sudden…” a pause…”seizure.”

“I’ll be right there. This is that hotel right?” Nico was on her feet, already deciding what to bring along.

“Yes, but…”

The other voice was back. “She’ll be fine, Bella. Kanan and I know what to do…”

Nico paused…’knew what to do’. Now she was positive Eli had switched her four legged form. No more discussion. “I will be there in a half an hour. If Eli isn’t somewhere Nico can see her, Nico will tear through your hotel room by room.”

“But....”

“Yeah, bye.” Nico ended the call and her phone buzzed again. She was about to answer with a snarl when she recognized Maki’s icon. Why now? Why the sudden switch from texting? Did no one realize Nico needed some normal as she raced to be the number one actor on any coast.

“Maki! Hey! How was your gig?” Nico tried to remember how much she’d been looking forward to Maki checking in.

“Exhausting.” Maki sounded growly grumpy. It might have been kinda cute, but Nico had seen too many pictures of Maki with her arm around a half dressed dancer or three. “SO many people hanging on me.”

“I know.” Nico knew her sentence would come through gritted teeth, “Nico saw all the snaps.”

“Rin just wouldn’t shut up either and I so want to get on a plane and just cancel the next three gigs and finally take you out to dinner and talk about anything but this or….”

Nico interrupted before Maki could get into full rant flow. “Maki, Nico completely agrees with where you’re going, but I can’t talk…”

“What’s wrong?” Maki’s tone instantly changing from complaining to concerned.

“Eli’s being held captive in a hotel.” Nico tried to speak as if that were an everyday thing Nico could obviously cope with.

“WHAT?” There might have been a phone dropping into a cushion noise. Then a scrabbling sound and Maki breathless, “What’s going on?”

“Nico doesn’t know….” Nico knew now she was sounding scared and frantic but she didn’t have the time to smooth things over for Maki. And it was a relief not to have to lie to Maki. “And I have to find out. So can we talk tomorrow?”

Maki sounded...mad…”Sure. I’ll text you.” And the call ended and Nico could feel the sourness left in the silence. Her hand tightened around the phone and there might almost have been a tear, but Eli was missing. And people Nico didn’t know had taken her roommate’s phone.

###

Maki wanted to pace, to punch. EVERY conversation with Nico seemed to stall at Eli, every plan Maki wanted to make...how much of Nico’s life revolved around her roommate? Before Maki had left town, Nico had made it seem like things were back to normal for Eli...But then Maki remembered the snarling, vicious sounds the night she’d gone to Nico’s to check on them,...was that how Eli was now all the time? Was Nico in danger? Maki checked her calendar, full moon next week. Didn’t Nico say she thought the early changes were more violent...Maki put her phone on speaker. Why pay a lawyer so much money if not to get DJ Diamond Princess out of things that Maki Nishikino didn’t want to do. Rin would be disappointed, but…

“Call Aya” she said as she opened her laptop to get to her travel account.

###

Nico stormed right up to the front desk. “Call Kanan Matsuura. I’m here to see Eli Ayase.”

The clerk frowned, typing a quick message into the pad in front of her.

“I said call…” Nico’s clenched fist rested on the desktop, ready to provide emphatic punctuation to her request.

The staffer smiled and pointed behind Nico, “Ms. Ohara will see you in her private suite. Please follow Ms. O’Hara’s assistant to the elevator.”

Nico turned to see a polite young woman in an exquisitely tailored suit, a pad tucked under her arm. “Good evening, Ms. Yazawa.”

“How do you know my name?”

“You’re listed as Ms. Ayase’s emergency contact. Ms. Ohara wishes me to assure you that Ms. Ayase is physically unharmed…”

“Shut up and walk faster.” Nico snapped, managing not to push the staffer along.

###

The elevator opened up into a foyer, with fountains and sculptures, a few tables and divans scattered, there were several floor to ceiling windows that looked out on the Pacific, Nico could see stars twinkling and the majority of the currently traitorous moon. It would have been breathtaking but Nico was on a mission.

No one was in sight so Nico just yelled, “ELI! WHERE ARE YOU? ELI!”

Nico heard a bark and a growl and someone, not sprinting, but hastening in her direction. A busty blonde, nearly falling out of a sundress, came around the corner and stopped in front of Nico, wagging a chiding finger.“You didn’t have to do that, silly. We just got her settled.”

Nico stepped right up to the blonde, who was slightly taller than Eli, “If you don’t let Eli go, I’m going to go through you, get her, and then maybe leave your front counter standing.”

“Oh, bella, you’re so cute, so tiny, so stizzoso…” the woman giggled.

Nico, seething, squared her shoulders and prepared to do her blitz move through this increasingly annoying obstacle. Another woman came into view, dark haired and solid, arm in a cast. Kanan Matsuura, Nico recognized her from Eli’s TWIG posts.

Kanan was shaking her head, hands in the kangaroo pocket of a sweatshirt,“You know Mari, I’m not going to defend you.”

The blonde whirled, pouting, hands reaching out. Nico just strode forward, busting the connection before the two women could even lock hands, shouting again, “ELI!”

A bark to the left, and a confused howl, then a whine of pain and a growl. Nico stopped, eyes the most dangerous of reds, “What did you do to her?”

Kanan put both hands up, “We just moved her to a safe space once the transformation seemed to be over. But she keeps…”

Nico didn’t let Kanan finish. “That doesn’t happen. It’s not even a full moon, that’s next week,” Nico knew she was starting to sound panicked, but Eli had been acting so oddly recently. “Something must have happened…”

“She’s in our guest room, Nico,” Kanan started to explain, “But I don’t think you should see her, she’s…” Kanan’s purple eyes were kind, but nothing like the amethyst Nico had been daydreaming about. She pulled up her sleeve and showed Nico a recently bandaged forearm, “It’s why we didn’t meet you downstairs. Eli’s lashing out. She’s terrified.”

Nico felt her knees buckle. What was happening? Why couldn’t Eli keep her transformations under control. “Eli hates changing. She usually sedates herself, but she wouldn’t have been expecting this not ‘til next week.” Or she would never have come here. Nico knew that.

Mari asked. “What does she use? We could slip some in her food?”

Nico froze. She’d been talking too much. These two already knew too much. Eli would be pissed. But they had to solve this immediate problem before Eli hurt herself or someone else. Racing through her knowledge of Eli’s habits, Nico grudgingly offered a suggestion, “Try playing Tchaikovsky, start with the Nutcracker. That usually relaxes her some.”

Mari pulled out her phone, swiped twice, and typed in letters. Classical music began to play. Kanan had a gentle hand on Nico’s shoulder and was leading her to a couch, “Are you hungry?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Nico shook her head, “Is she really okay?” And then suspicion kicked in, “And why are you so calm?”

“She’s physically uninjured, but it sounds like there’s been recent upheavals in her usual routine, which would be a long term concern.” Kanan sat next to Nico, “And I have some experience with a similar situation.”

“Kanan’s not nearly as fluffy, though.” The super annoying blonde giggled. Nico glared, not wanting to encourage what seemed to be silly jokes.

“Mari.” Kanan’s voice was stern, a warning. Then she turned back to Nico. “We know people who can help.”

“How? Who?”

Mari laughed, “LA is one of those places where you can find anything. It’s why so many of us come here.”

“So you know other werewolves…”

Kanan shrugged, “Mermaids, jiaos, selkies, frogpeople, dark watchers...we have friends who help them get help...very quietly.”

“Have you told Eli?” Nico didn’t like having this discussion about Eli without Eli.

Kanan sighed. “We didn’t know she needed it. Until tonight.”

Nico stood. “Then Nico doesn’t say anything else. This is Eli’s business. Nico’s just here to make sure you’re not going to skin her or turn her into the government.”

More giggling. “She’s too adorable to…”

“Mari…” Kanan snapped, her patience finally fleeing to join Nico’s somewhere else. “Please forgive my wife, she has a very questionable sense of humor.”

Nico frowned and crossed her arms, ignoring the blonde irritant. “Where’s the room, Nico wants to tell Eli I’m here.”

Kanan stood, “Follow me.”

###

Nico’s phone buzzed and the room she was lying on pillows in front of exploded in a crazy frenzy of barking. “Damn it…” Nico pulled out her phone. Maki...calling....

“Hey.” Nico winced as she thought of what Maki was hearing on the other end.

“Are you at home?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Long story, Maki.” Nico sat up, pulling the blanket Kanan had gotten her up to her shoulders. “Can we speed this up. I need to quiet Eli down.”

A pause. “Where are you?”

“The Ohara BeachFront. Where Eli rehearses.”

“Fine. I’ll be there as soon as I clear customs.”

“What? Why aren’t you in Canada?”

“Do you need anything?” Maki ignored Nico’s question.

Nico frowned, she hated to say what she was going to say next but it was already after dawn and Eli was still sounding furrier than usual, “Bring a muzzle.”

Another silence and then Maki blew out a long breath. In her mind, Nico could just see the arc of the redhead’s jaw sharpen as she processed that request.

“All right.” And then Maki’s voice got kinder, “Be careful, Nico, please.”

“Nico is trying.”

“Good.” Maki muttered something away from the phone, then came back, “I’ll see you soon, Nico.”

“Are you all right, Nico?” Kanan’s voice came out of nowhere as Maki ended the call and Nico jumped.

“Don’t sneak up on Nico.” Nico knew it might be unreasonable to scold someone for walking around their own house, but Nico was not in a polite mood.

“Sorry.”

“My friend is coming to help me get Eli home.” Nico pocketed her phone.

“Eli can stay here as long as she needs to. You too.” Kanan offered Nico her hand, “Are you ready for breakfast. Mari had the staff send up everything.”

“Including raw chuck roast? Eli likes to chew on that.” Nico stretched. Next time she was in a fancy hotel for a sleepover, there would be comfy mattresses.

“I’ll get some.” Kanan started down the hall.

Nico put her hand on the door, whispering. “It’s okay, Eli. Nico’ll get you breakfast and take you home.”

Growling. A thump as Eli lunged at the door. Nico closed her eyes, frustrated at both the situation and having an audience.

“It might be better…” Kanan had stopped.

Nico’s temper flared, and she only barely held back a shout. “You don’t know anything about Eli. I need to get her back in a familiar place as soon as possible. She’s…” Nico chose her next word with some thought, “sensitive.”

Kanan smiled, but Nico wasn’t open to friendly, “Mari and I just want to help. We consider Eli a friend now.”

Nico snapped her fingers at Kanan, “Well Nico can’t really talk to Eli about your new BFF status now, can I? How does Nico know you didn’t dose her with something.”

Horrified, Kanan’s eyes widened, “I would never…”

“How would Nico know?” Accusation. Strong. Fierce. Nico was back to something solid, protecting her friend.

Kanan hung her head, Mari was better at winning over skeptics, but she’d had to deal with handing off her morning tasks so it would be a half an hour or so before she would return. “I promise we’ll help with whatever you and your friend want to do. Just eat some breakfast first.”

“Order Eli’s.”

Kanan pulled out her phone. This was something Nico was going to allow her to do. Maybe after breakfast Kanan could get everyone working together.

A/N: Just finished up 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' which was excellent but exhausting fun so getting back in the writing game. Is it too darn hot wherever you are?

[blondecarfucker]

Bed of Roses (Chapter 18)

Roger Taylor x Reader

BoRhap!Roger Taylor x Reader

Fic Summary: It's 1971. You just moved to London to study, and you find a band on a local pub after a bad date. The encounter doesn’t go the way you expect it, and neither does what follows this evening as you try to deal with loving Roger Taylor.

Fic Note: So I’ve had this story in my head for the last three weeks and finally decided to write it down. It’s completely planned. It will have 21 chapters and it’s divided in three acts: Dusk, Night and Dawn. It’s will be a bit angsty in the future, and it will most likely have some smut as well. I hope you guys enjoy it! Tell me what you think about it in the asks/comments/messages. PLEASE REMEMBER THIS IS NOT THE LAST CHAPTER OF THE STORY. If this is your first time stumbling upon Bed of Roses, thank you for stopping by! The rest of the story is in my masterlist, the link is in my bio - can't put the link here or else the post will disappear from the tags.

Chapter's notes: Hello and welcome to a HAPPY CHAPTER!!! at least its the happiest since like 11??? i hope you guys enjoy it. it was pretty fun to write - god i love payoff

Words: 2500ish

ACT 3 - DAWN

“It’s the moment night time seems weaker and everything seems easier to figure out”

Chapter 18

You could listen to Stevie's sweet voice as Silver Springs filled your new flat, the boxes filled with your books, the wooden floor covered in your favourite tapestry, the smell of incense in the air. Even though it was raining outside, you had a big, warm smile on your lips - the rain was only another reason for it. You felt home.

You were back in London, a week away from starting your new job in the British Museum. Your biggest life goal, now true. You couldn't believe it.

It was like all pain and suffering on your way to that moment, that precious moment unpacking your things on your first day back in London, made sense. Life couldn't be simple and easy all the time - there's no point in it. But it could be some simple and easy some of the time, like it was now.

You were scared you'd go back to the dark places in your mind you were the last time you've been in London, but as soon as you passed through your old neighbourhood on your way to your new flat, you didn't feel sad - not even when you thought of Roger.

Actually, Roger was all around you.

You wanted to call him as soon as you read the letter in your loft, a month ago, where your new colleague said he admired your work at the Met the last time he visited, and now that the British Museum Curator for the Metal Age Collections was retiring, he couldn't help but think of you - especially when he did some research and found out that you were already familiar with London, studying and working there years before.

You sat on the floor on your loft, in shock. You wondered if this was real, if this was actually a letter you received. It was the letter you've always dreamed of receiving.

And now it was right in front of you.

You felt overwhelmed at first, and ran to the phone. Once you got to it, you didn't knew who you should call - the phone number in the letter, so you could officially accept their offer? Your parents? Your grandma? Your colleagues?

But before you could realize it, you started to dial the your old number - the number for your old house.

You thought about stopping, but what's wrong? This was important. Roger was the one who watched you struggle the most to get to this moment; he knew the price you had to pay for it. He paid it himself, too.

It was only fair that he should be the first to know.

But you kept waiting for him to pick the phone up, and you realized how innocent that was - he moved out, of course he moved out. You knew the band was making more money on their new label - they said it in a few interviews. There was no reason for you to think that he would stay in the same flat he shared with you when you were broke students.

You didn't knew, but if you called a week earlier, he would pick up. Your old flat has been empty for a week when you call, and the neighbourhood's cat rubbed himself against the closed window as the phone ringed - Roger forgot to take the line off, and the real estate agency hasn't visited yet at that point.

It was fine, though. You held your memories of Roger with gratitude on your mind - there was no more space for pain. You missed him, sometimes, but it was in the same way you missed being a child on the wooden roller coaster in Coney Island - happy memories that left you with a smile on your lips.

Like when you were on the plane yesterday, going to London, and since the Museum paid for the tickets, they got you a first class cabin - and you couldn't help but think of you and Roger in their first airplane ride as a band.

"Rog, why are you so pale?", you asked, and he frowned as Freddie laughed with you. You two were the only ones who've been on a plane before, and Freddie was with a pale Mary under his arms. "You're gonna be fine, my love. Relax", he whispered, pressing a kiss on top of her head.

Brian was with some other girl you didn't knew - one of those uncomfortable moments. He was probably in a fight with Chrissie. Veronica and Deacy looked pale together.

But you were more concerned with Roger. He was acting confident, as usual, but you could notice his clenched jaw during the entire takeoff, and how his usually rosy cheeks didn't have a drop of color. He was scared.

"C'mon, Rog. Planes are safer than cars, you know", you told him, and you could see him trying to think of something to answer you under all his nervousness. But he kept quiet, only taking your hand onto his as a response.

"Maybe if you get distracted… Let's play Scrabble!" you said, turning your head so you could look around for the stupid game the boys always played on the tour bus.

"Y/N, you don't know how to play Scrabble", he reminded you, and you frowned. "True, but maybe winning will be an even better distraction", you answered.

"I can think of something else you could do to distract me", he told you, letting go of your hand so he could run your fingers up your thighs.

"We can hear you", Deacy said out loud, his eyes closed as he held Veronica, and the you laughed.

"It's called voyeurism, Deacon" you told him, your eyes on Roger so you could see his reaction. Everyone laughed, but Roger's laugh was the one that made your terrible joke worth it.

He winked at you, and then went straight to the bathroom. You got the message, and after a few moments, you followed him.

"Very discrete, the two of you going in separately" Freddie said as you walked to the bathroom.

"Yeah, as if none of us know what's about to happen there", Brian told you, and you shrugged.

You weren't really in the mood for semi-public sex, even though it happened more times with Roger than you ever expected to happen in your life. But you liked how even when he was frightened, Roger was still distracting himself with you. It massaged your ego.

So you got in - the door was unlocked - and was met with Roger's lips. You smirked as he kissed you. "This fast, Rog?", you asked, and he had his signature devilish smirk on as he answered "Well, you're the one who wanted to distract me", and you pulled him back into your lips by the collar of his jacket.

He tried to put you on the sink, but it made a loud noise, and you were afraid to break it - your eyes wide as you got up quick from the sink after the noise - but Roger just shrugged and held you against the wall.

It was pretty uncomfortable - because of the toilet, Roger's legs were pressed together in the tiny space on the ground, and one of your legs was on top of the toilet, the other one on the ground, squeezed between Roger's leg and the door.

It wasn't long before you felt cramps on the leg that was thrown over the toilet, at the same time Roger tried to get your pants down but couldn't - your legs had to be spread open for the both of you to fit in that bathroom, and so it was impossible to take your pants down.

He frowned, and soon looked concerned once he saw your face contorted in pain. "Leg cramps", you told him, and he smiled. "You could've worn a skirt", he said before zipping your pants up. "I don't think we're getting this distracted until the plane lands", he told you, and you laughed. "I guess you're right. And how was I supposed to guess you'd try to fuck in the bathroom? Pants are more comfortable for travelling, anyway", you told him, and he nodded as he opened the door and led you back to your seats.

"This fast? I thought you could do better than this, Roger", Freddie told him as you sat, and Mary laughed. "Be sure that I can, Freddie", he was quick to answer, which made you calm. If he was affirming his masculinity in public without second thought, he was relaxed again.

"So we need to avoid the bathroom now?", Mary asked you, and you were quick to answer, too. "Good luck getting anything done there, Mary. It's the tightest place I've been", you said, and you could see that Roger was about to make a sexual joke, so you put your hand over his lips.

"What?" he asked once you took your hand off. "I swear I developed a spidey-sense for your bad jokes", you told him, and he laughed. "Fair enough. C'mon, I'll teach you how to play Scrabble", he told you.

This memory would usually make you sad and nostalgic, but now you could only laugh at it. You were both so young and horny, for the lack of a better word. You always went with Roger's weird ideas, and it always paid off - he loved the fact that you liked sex as much as he did, and wasn't embarrassed of it.

And you were even happier now that you made up with your memories, cause you're having these flashbacks all the time - not only you were back in London, where even a coffee shop could remind you of him, but his face was everywhere - the band has just started promoting their new album, News Of The World, and even though you've only been here for a day, you heard their new singles twice each.

They were incredible, as usual - We Are The Champions and We Will Rock You. So different from the style you were used to, but you liked it. And Roger looked amazing in the pictures, as usual.

It did ache your heart, a bit, to know that you were in the same city as the boys - as Roger - and had no means to contact them. They were around you, everywhere - he was - but you couldn't really see him. It reminds you of a poem you read in a bookstore in Alphabet City, back in New York, in a book full of Islamic poetry.

Unable to perceive the shape of you,

I find you all around me.

Your presence fills my eyes with your love,

It humbles my heart,

For you are everywhere.

You think you would at least call and say that you're in town, if you could.

The perspective of seeing Roger - if you could get in touch with the boys - made your heart flutter. You wonder if he'll always have that effect on you.

After unpacking some of the most basic stuff, like cutlery and places, beddings, etc., you start to unpack your clothes. Then you're met with the deep blue chiffon of the Louis Vuitton dress Roger gave you years ago - he had the pleasure of taking in the view of you in it as much as he had the pleasure to take you off the dress, and he did it a few times.

You couldn't get yourself to use it in New York, though. In the beginning, it felt like cheating on Roger again - maybe the dress belonged to him as much as the heart necklace, never really yours to keep.

But you hated moving, and ever since you moved to SoHo, you forgot about it. You didn't even notice it as you threw all of your clothes - still on their hangers - on the moving boxes to London.

The soft fabric and what it meant for you warmed your heart again - both so pure, so full of love. It was a pity that circumstances and bad decisions separated you, but it was for the best. You didn't see it then, but now you're about to start your dream job, and Roger is having not only fame, but the financial success he desired.

You decide to try on the dress, and it still fits beautifully. Then you look at all of the boxes you still have to deal with, and you decide to give yourself a break tonight. The boxes can wait, everything can always wait for it's right time, you remind yourself as you get inside the bathtub.

A few hours later, you're out on your city again. You walk along the street that has your favourite pubs from your college years, many of them that you knew inside out because of how many times the boys performed there.

And you pass through a familiar building - the pub where you met Roger. The last time you saw it, it was closed.

Now it's filled with people and warm lights, which is good - you didn't bring a coat, since it was supposed to still be warm enough outside, and now your exposed legs and arms paid the price.

A familiar sound fills your ears as you open the door - The Chain, by Fleetwood Mac. You look inside and realize it's a cover band for them - the girl who's doing Stevie's vocals even copies the way she moves, which is still pretty recent in your mind, since you saw them a few days before going to London.

You head to the bar and ask for a pint, and as you look down, you notice your pint has small ondulations on its surface. Someone's hitting their fingers against the table in the same beat as the song.

You look to the side, and there it is - there's a couple people between the two of you, who get up at that very moment - but there are the two hands, full of rings, drumming against the wooden surface.

But as you watch the hands for a few seconds, the realization hits you:

You've seen this hands many, many times before.

No fucking way.

You start to look up from the hands - and you can almost feel them brushing against your skin again, and a cream colored blazer over an open white button up. With the first few buttons undone.

You could recognize his chest and neck anywhere.

And that jaw - you still remember how it felt against your lips.

Those lips… you have no words.

His eyes, framed by his hair - way shorter! - were wide, in shock.

You realized he was checking you out, too. Again.

He bit his lips as you unconsciously smooth your dress on your thighs.

And then he looks back into your eyes, and his genuine smile makes your body buzz.

"Y/N. I guess you're not in the mood for rushing things, are you?", Roger's voice asks you.

---

Chapter 19

Masterlist

Taglist:

@taylorroger-s @sarai-ibn-la-ahad @its-nessi @anamcg317 @frenchieswiftie @queen-danielle-dani-dan @minihemo @shutup-sorry @theyrealllegends @killerqueenisthebest @ashagracelove @hardy-s @fuckinghurricanesoul @secretsweetscollectionblog @mrswinterhater @11mb0 @tamtam-go92 @derptatosaur @brianandthemays @phantom-fangirl-stuff @the-hysterical-queen @rogerofmylife @notevenlxvely @discodeakyy @x1975sos @16wiishes @jennycidesstuff @partydulce @melros-e

[pocket-luv101]

Hugh: I'm a G!

Misono: Why would you want to be a letter that's only worth two points in scrabble?

Tetsu: He's right. Q is better.

[barpurplewrites]

Dithering

Gold has a task to complete and he is doing everything he can to put it off.

-x-x-x

Procrastination. Gold carefully printed the word on the doodle filled page. A fifteen letter word, worth nineteen points in Scrabble, and that was just the face value of the tiles, depending on the multipliers it would be worth much more. Of course the odds of having the correct combination of tiles on the board and in one's hand to make the word would have to be rather small. On the other hand, the amount of games played around the globe in English each year meant that the right conditions had probably cropped up a surprising number of times.

Gold was good at working out loan rates in his head, but the maths for those probabilities was a bit beyond him. He drew a dark cloud and a lightening bolt on the page, and then some lotto balls, he guessed the odds were some where between those two things happening. Someone would have worked out the maths, there was bound to be a website listing the chances of getting a certain word on a Scrabble board. He glanced at his computer and groaned out loud. He was actually considering searching for the site.

This was ridiculous.

A glance at the clock on the wall told him he'd sat here dithering for almost an hour. It wasn't the first time he'd had to serve an eviction notice. It wasn't as common occurrence as the gossip in town would have most believe. Having properties without tenants simply wasn't good business practice. Occasionally he'd experience a sting of bitterness that all and sundry recalled each eviction he'd served over the years, but none cared to remember all the times he'd helped tenants get their finances in order so that they kept a roof over their heads.

Frustration caused him to score a deep mark across the page. The nib of the pen bit through the paper and left a trail of ink on the page below. He tossed the pen onto the desk and sat back in his chair with a huff. The chair squeaked a little as he rocked himself from side to side, he'd have to oil this soon. Did he have any oil?

“Oh for pity's sake! Get a grip, Gold!”

Oiling his chair? Scrabble scores? He'd be alphabetizing his books next. All he had to do was pick up the buff envelope on the desk and walk across to the library. He'd be done in ten minutes, maybe fifteen. A distasteful task would be over and he could go home. The envelope should have combusted under the scowl it was receiving.

He did not want to do this, and damn her Regina knew that. Madam Mayor was clever, and this time she'd outmanoeuvred him. Privately he had a grudging respect for her handling of the library situation, red hot coals would never get him to admit it aloud of course. His foot started tapping against the floor as he considered the problem for the hundredth time.

Fact; he owned the library building. Regina's father had sold the building to him when he had been Mayor. The sale injected much needed funds into the city coffers and moved the responsibility of maintenance to Gold.

Fact; a town covenant stated that the building could only be used as a 'free library for the public good'. Gold had known this before he signed the deal with Henry Mills Sr. He wasn't a fool. The rent he made from the building was nominal, but he'd been more interesting in keeping a fully functional library in the town he now called home. Public libraries had been a haven for him as a child, and as much as people might believe that this arrangement was some sort of elaborate tax scam, he actually wanted to give something back the community.

Fact: the town was supposed to finance the running of the library, which it had done for many years.

Fact; Regina had cut the budget for the library, claiming the funds needed to be injected into the harbour redevelopment. He still had his doubts about the truth of that statement.

Fact; Regina hated the library for reasons he'd not yet discovered. She also loathed him and the delight she was taking in him having an empty building that he was unable to develop on his hands was bordering on shameful.

Fact; he had to serve the eviction notice to the librarian who's flat was part of the library, and who would be unable to pay her rent by the end of next month.

“Fact; I don't want to do that to Belle.” Gold aimed a petulant kick at the leg of his desk and swore under his breath as his toe throbbed from the impact. With a sigh he rested his elbows on the desk and slumped his chin into his hands.

That was the truth of the matter. Oh, he didn't want Regina to get one over on him in their never-ending battle of one-upmanship, and he didn't want the town to lose the library, but the main reason was Belle French. He sank his fingers into his hair and groaned. He liked Belle, she was an intelligent, friendly ray of pure sunshine. If the library closed she would leave town to find another job, and he would lose a friend and a great Scrabble opponent. There had to be something he could do! But what?

The tinkle of the chimes above the shop door were a welcome interruption to his hopeless swirling thoughts. With a sigh he heaved himself to his feet and made a token attempt to smooth his ruffled hair.

“Gold? Are you back there?”

The sound of Belle's voice had him hurrying to the front of shop; “Belle? How are, wait are you alright?”

Belle was flushed and out of breath, but there was a smile on her face. She stepped towards the counter and placed the armful of folders she was carrying on the glass top. Gold had a sudden urge to brush the loose lock of hair that had escaped her ponytail from her forehead. Where the hell had that come from? He diverted his hand to the pile of folders instead.

“So, what do we have here?”

Belle had her breathing back to normal now; “I've found a way to save the library,” she bit her bottom lip, “but I need some help with the forms.”

“Of course anything Belle, anything at all.”

Her enthusiastic smile proved infectious, Gold felt himself grinning like an idiot, and found he didn't care in the slightest.

-o0o-

One month later Belle ran into Gold's shop again. This time she had only one slim envelope and a few sheets of paper in her hand. She ignored Regina's sneer and rushed behind the counter, throwing herself into Gold's arms.

“We got the funding!”

Gold had managed to keep his balance as Belle jumped at him by wrapping one arm around her waist and bracing the other against the counter. Her smiling face was so very close to his, and he could think of a million reasons why he should step back, should put some distance between them before he did something foolish like...

“Oh.”

His tiny gasp of surprise was muffled as Belle's lips met his in a soft kiss.

“For goodness sake! Must I be subjected to such a disgusting display?”

Regina's huffed complaint made them step back from each other. Gold felt cold now Belle was standing at a socially respectable distance from him, he poured all of that ice into his tone as he turned a shark-like grin on Regina and said; “For once your intrusion is well-timed Madam Mayor. Your presence here will save either of us a trip to city hall. Belle? Would you care to share the wonderful news?”

“I'd be delighted. Madam Mayor, we have secured funding to keep the library open for the next five years...”

As Belle explained the various grants and endowments they had successfully applied for Gold watched the smirk slide off Regina's face. It was interesting how quickly she pulled the mask of polished politician back into place and offered Belle her hand.

“Congratulations Miss French. The town will no doubt thank you for your hard work and dedication.”

Regina gave him a curt nod that promised retribution at a later date and left the shop. After watching the door close gently behind her, Belle turned her eyes back to Gold.

Neither spoke, the crackling tension in the air between them needed no words. Gold reached for her waist as Belle reached for his shoulders. Their second kiss was as gentle and brief as their first. A short shared breath later and they were kissing with passion and need; kissing as if they had waited their whole lives to do so; kissing as if they had always done this; kissing as lovers, as they would for the rest of their days together.

[professorflowriter]

To have loved, and lost. Ch9

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11402901/chapters/30389124

As the last of the lingering traces of firewhiskey in his veins evaporated, Snape crumpled once more to the floor in agony, both physical and emotional. The pain potion which he managed to scrabble around for and eventually tip into his mouth only took care of the former, and once he was free of it, the whole weight of his misery crashed down upon him. He was acutely aware of the emptiness of the house around him, the absence she’d left behind an almost tangible entity. The picture on the mantel piece him seemed to mock him, a pitiful reminder of the potential happiness he had been so quick to squander. The whole bloody house seemed to mock him for that matter the furniture that she had chosen, as abandoned and uncared for as he.

He’d never felt so lonely, not even during that terrible year as Headmaster.

Sobering up had been an awful idea.

Not that getting drunk again was a better one. Now that he was fully sober for the first time in over three weeks, the thought of buying cheap booze to get him back into the state he’d been in seemed far less appealing than it had a few minutes before.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, curled up on the floor and soaking in his own misery, but the house was dark when a loud rapping at the door made him jump. For a moment his heart leapt with the thought that it might be her. But brutal reality set in all too quickly, and he knew that it would never be her. How could it be, after everything he’d done to her? The knock sounded again, and he debated whether or not to ignore it the way he’d ignored all callers since she left.

1 year, 11 months earlier

Severus lay in bed, waiting for his door to open silently and for her to enter. It would be the first time since that awful night that she would come to his bed, almost a month ago. He known he’d hurt her, more than before, not that he’d been any more capable of rectifying the situation, as he still wasn’t ready to admit out loud that there was anything wrong, let alone that it was his fault. But deep down, he knew that he’d crossed a line that night, one he wasn’t sure he could step back over.

Even so, he hadn’t expected her to go to such extremes to avoid him.

…

Three nights after the ball he’d gone to bed, expecting her to be there waiting for him. It had been the last night to complete the second of the required two copulations for that week, and as usual she had gone up early. But when he’d reached his room he’d found his bed as empty as it was every other night of the week that she wasn’t forced into it.

Assuming that she’d be along any minute he’d made his own preparations and climbed into bed, grabbing his new book off the bedside table to read until she appeared. It was a testament to the excellence of the text that he’d read for over an hour without lifting his eyes from the pages before realising Hermione still had not come.

Laying the book aside, he’d climbed out of bed, grumbling under his breath, and gone in search of her. He’ known from his own wards on the house that she had not left, and when he’d reached her door, he’d found it locked and warded. Judging by her lack of response when he’d begun to bang on the wood, she’d also erected a silencing charm. Fighting a rising wave of panic he’d retreated to his room before he’d wound up smashing through her wards and doing something he’d regret even more than his treatment of her earlier in the week.

Once there he’d begun to pace, confused and dismayed at the position she was putting him in. If they didn’t copulate as require by the Ministry they would investigate, wanting to know why. And if there was no good reason they might dig further into his marriage. There may be questions about the lack of a pregnancy, and even if he was able to convince them it was still early days there would undoubtedly be more scrutiny on them than before. And who knows what other things might be brought to light about their relationship. Gossip was always rife amongst Ministry officials, and Severus knew that talk about any of the Golden Trio, or even himself, invariably made its quick way to ears eager for a scandal to print.

He’d not known what to do. On the one hand he’d not wanted to shatter his already delicate relationship with his wife, but was the risk of an investigation worth it, especially considering the Ministry had the power to invalidate any of the marriages they deemed to be defective. He didn’t want to lose her. Even after everything that had happened between them, he’d do just about anything to stop their marriage from being dissolved. No doubt he’d be forced into union with some leftover hag in any case, and living with a wife that hated him was far better living with one that he hated.

But one thing had kept him from breaking into her room and fulfilling the Ministry decree. The idea of forcing himself upon her was so revolting that it had overcome his fear of losing her. It was hard enough when she was silent and still beneath him, but if she refused him completely he could not imagine violating her in such a way.

After an hour or so he’d eventually dropped to the bed with exhaustion, the feeling of pressure in his chest almost crushing him, the idea of losing her making him want to choke with fear. He’d barely slept that night, having woken from more than one half-remembered nightmare, and upon waking had found himself still curled up on top of his blankets.

Wearily he’d showered and dressed before making his way downstairs, the heaviness in both his body and mind combining to make it feel as if he’d overindulged in firewhiskey the night before.

He hadn’t known what he’d expected to find, but his breakfast, sitting as always on the kitchen table under a warming charm, waiting for him to appear, had not been it. The one bite of toast that he’d taken tasted enough like ash that he’d immediately banished the lot, plate and all, to oblivion, before descending to his lab. Not that he’d got anything done beyond checking on the couple of potions that still had to mature for a few days, as he’d been far too busy sulking in the dark.

For three days he’d barely saw sight nor sound of Hermione, although he’d not exactly been making an effort to be sociable either. His meals, however, had continued to appear, morning and evening, but each was scarcely touched before the rest was binned. A hollow feeling, not just from the lack of food, grew larger daily, low in his stomach. He knew that his appearance was becoming more and more frightful as he began to neglect not only his meals but his own hygiene, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. If he lost her, none of that would matter anyway.

Each night he’d gone to bed early, telling himself that he was just tired, and not just waiting and hoping that she would appear, but unable to sleep easily, or even concentrate on his book. It was just a matter of time, he knew, before the Ministry would start sticking their noses into their marriage.

And then, on the fourth morning, exactly what he’d been dreading had occurred: A Ministry owl had tapped at the window, disturbing his pensive stupor over another uneaten breakfast. With shaking hands he’d torn the red seal open, bile rising in his throat as he began to read.

A few moments later, the parchment had dropped to the table from numb fingers and had lain there, half-forgotten in the wake of the message it had contained, until Hermione returned some hours later.

Snape had, at some point, made his way into the sitting room, where he’d sat, dazed and bewildered, lost in thought half the day. The sound of her entering through the back door roused him, and slowly he stood to face the door through which he expected her to walk any moment. Motionlessly he waited, his ears straining to hear the crackling sound the parchment being opened enough to read.

When she’d finally appeared, her face had been pale and wan, but hard, as if expecting a confrontation. The parchment hung limply from her fingers. They stared at each other for a few moments, both unwilling to be the first to speak.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he ground out, unable to bear the silence any longer

Hermione sighed almost inaudibly. “There was nothing to tell, Severus,” she replied, her voice soft tired.

“Nothing to tell?” He’d stridden forward, grabbing her wrist and wrenching it up so the evidence of his displeasure was held suspended between them. “When did this happen?”

She’d winced briefly with the pressure of his fingers gripping her tightly, but otherwise had made no sign that he was hurting her. Severus relaxed his grip a little.

“I told you, nothing happened.”

Her unnatural calmness had only infuriated him more. “Then why does this letter tell me we’ve been excused from marital relations for a month.”

She’d pulled her hand free. “What do you want me to say, Severus? That I lied about the reasons why I needed a break from… this?” She’d gestured between them. “It’s not like I could tell them the truth, is it?”

He’d felt a wave of relief wash over him, although there were still questions he wanted answered before his anxiety could be assuaged. He pulled the letter from her hand to wave it at her accusingly. “You’re telling me you’ve deceived the Ministry? Should I expect the aurors to bang on the door to arrest us at any moment, or will this fiction manage to stand up to greater scrutiny?”

“You don’t need to worry,” she’d sneered back. “I managed to trade a favour with someone who would have even more to lose if they revealed our deal. The maternity unit at St Mungo’s will be receiving the full grant they requested, despite having already been warned that the application would be sure to fail. They won’t risk having to repay it all, not with the expected rise in births to come. And as for their side of the bargain, well, let’s just say they’re not exactly supporters of this bloody law, and can well understand the need for some respite from scheduled fucking.” She’d paused for a moment. “It does tend to take the romance out of it all somewhat, don’t you think?” she’d added, her voice bitter, before turning to leave.

“So… the child…?” he’d asked softly, all fight having gone out of him.

“There was never any child Severus. I assume you’d be relieved about that, in any case.”

He barely heard her climb the stairs towards her room, leaving him alone once more. Relief had coursed through him, although there was a strange twinge of disappointment that he couldn’t quite understand, considering he should have known there was no chance of a pregnancy. He’d sat back own in the chair he had occupied for so many hours today, automatically smoothing the parchment out over his lap as he tried to sort out his feelings. His fingers had unconsciously traced the words that had caused him so much distress; ‘…having recently suffered a miscarriage, the Ministry has excused you…”, but once he’d realised what he was doing he’d crumpled the letter into a ball, intending to throw it into the fire. At the last minute he thought better of it, realising that perhaps it would be needed in the future, and instead had thrown it into the seat she always occupied, and stormed down to his lab, where he’d proceeded to extract a bottle of firewhiskey from its hiding place and drink until he’d passed out in the single ratty armchair in the corner.

In its place on the chair a floor above, the parchment had slowly uncrumpled enough to reveal the odd half sentence, including the one which had so perturbed him until Hermione had revealed it all for the lie it was.

…

And now, those weeks apart at an end, Severus waited, torn between nervousness and impatience, for his wife to appear. His anxiety over her attitude and expectations as she returned to his bed were going to do him no favours, and by the time she did creep quietly into his room, he was so tense that he jumped out of bed to greet her, only remembering his nakedness when she stopped and stared in bewilderment at his strange behaviour.

His cheeks flushing a deep pink, he scrambled back into bed, abandoning his dignity completely when his feet tangled in the sheets, almost causing him to fall on his face. It was a few moments before he’d recovered his composure enough to look at her, so whether she’d found amusement in his clumsy performance he’d never know. Certainly there was no hint of mirth in her expression when he turned to face her.

She had already climbed in beside him, and was clearly in no mood to procrastinate, for, instead of pulling up the cover around her, she’d left it lying around her waist, and the lack of nightclothes left her naked to his gaze. Despite all of his earlier apprehension, he found his body responding eagerly to the sight of her. The last month had been almost unbearable, not being able to touch her after having become used to regular sex.

He reached out to caress her breasts, lowering his mouth to suck gently on one pink bud. He could feel her stiffen beneath him, and when he looked up at her, her eyes were closed but clearly not in pleasure, judging by the tension in her jaw. A desire to ensure her pleasure before his own led him to redouble his efforts at her breasts with his lips, gently running his fingers over the curves of her body. The small sigh that escaped her only encouraged him, and slowly his hand moved lower, until he was nudging her legs apart. But when he reached down to caress her hard nub she shifted, trapping his fingers so that he couldn’t continue.

“Please Severus… don’t…” She swallowed audibly. “…please don’t do that.” She turned her face away from him slightly, making it hard for him to read the expression in her eyes.

He felt something inside him harden. If that’s how she wants it… He tugged his hand free, and immediately her legs relaxed, easily parting once more as he moved over her to settle in between them.

“As you wish…” was his only reply before he slowly filled her. No longer caring for her pleasure, he only thought of his own as he thrust into her. Despite his earlier eagerness, it seemed to take an age before he felt his balls tighten, and looking down at her, her own impatience for him to finish was clear in the way she was staring fixedly at the ceiling. The feeling of accomplishment and relief when he finally emptied his seed into her was colossal, and he rolled straight off her onto his back, gasping with the exertion.

The sound of his heavy breathing was the only sound in the room for a minute or two. As the seconds ticked by, the feeling of awkwardness grew. Before he could say anything, however, she was gone, slipping out quietly, leaving his body satiated, but his need for her, strangely unfulfilled.

[unsettlingshortstories]

The Faery Handbag

Kelly Link (2004)

I used to go to thrift stores with my friends. We’d take the train into Boston, and go to The Garment District, which is this huge vintage clothing warehouse. Everything is arranged by color, and somehow that makes all of the clothes beautiful. It’s kind of like if you went through the wardrobe in the Narnia books, only instead of finding Aslan and the White Witch and horrible Eustace, you found this magic clothing world–instead of talking animals, there were feather boas and wedding dresses and bowling shoes, and paisley shirts and Doc Martens and everything hung up on racks so that first you have black dresses, all together, like the world’s largest indoor funeral, and then blue dresses–all the blues you can imagine–and then red dresses and so on. Pink-reds and orangey reds and purple-reds and exit-light reds and candy reds. Sometimes I would close my eyes and Natasha and Natalie and Jake would drag me over to a rack, and rub a dress against my hand. “Guess what color this is.”

We had this theory that you could learn how to tell, just by feeling, what color something was. For example, if you’re sitting on a lawn, you can tell what color green the grass is, with your eyes closed, depending on how silky-rubbery it feels. With clothing, stretchy velvet stuff always feels red when your eyes are closed, even if it’s not red. Natasha was always best at guessing colors, but Natasha is also best at cheating at games and not getting caught.

One time we were looking through kid’s t-shirts and we found a Muppets t-shirt that had belonged to Natalie in third grade. We knew it belonged to her, because it still had her name inside, where her mother had written it in permanent marker, when Natalie went to summer camp. Jake bought it back for her, because he was the only one who had money that weekend. He was the only one who had a job.

Maybe you’re wondering what a guy like Jake is doing in The Garment District with a bunch of girls. The thing about Jake is that he always has a good time, no matter what he’s doing. He likes everything, and he likes everyone, but he likes me best of all. Wherever he is now, I bet he’s having a great time and wondering when I’m going to show up. I’m always running late. But he knows that.

We had this theory that things have life cycles, the way that people do. The life cycle of wedding dresses and feather boas and t-shirts and shoes and handbags involves the Garment District. If clothes are good, or even if they’re bad in an interesting way, the Garment District is where they go when they die. You can tell that they’re dead, because of the way that they smell. When you buy them, and wash them, and start wearing them again, and they start to smell like you, that’s when they reincarnate. But the point is, if you’re looking for a particular thing, you just have to keep looking for it. You have to look hard.

Down in the basement at the Garment Factory they sell clothing and beat-up suitcases and teacups by the pound. You can get eight pounds worth of prom dresses–a slinky black dress, a poufy lavender dress, a swirly pink dress, a silvery, starry lame dress so fine you could pass it through a key ring– for eight dollars. I go there every week, hunting for Grandmother Zofia’s faery handbag.

The faery handbag: It’s huge and black and kind of hairy. Even when your eyes are closed, it feels black. As black as black ever gets, like if you touch it, your hand might get stuck in it, like tar or black quicksand or when you stretch out your hand at night, to turn on a light, but all you feel is darkness.

Fairies live inside it. I know what that sounds like, but it’s true.

Grandmother Zofia said it was a family heirloom. She said that it was over two hundred years old. She said that when she died, I had to look after it. Be its guardian. She said that it would be my responsibility.

I said that it didn’t look that old, and that they didn’t have handbag two hundred years ago, but that just made her cross. She said, “So then tell me, Genevieve, darling, where do you think old ladies used to put their reading glasses and their heart medicine and their knitting needles?”

I know that no one is going to believe any of this. That’s okay. If I thought you would, then I couldn’t tell you. Promise me that you won’t believe a word. That’s what Zofia used to say to me when she told me stories. At the funeral, my mother said, half-laughing and half-crying, that her mother was the world’s best liar. I think she thought maybe Zofia wasn’t really dead. But I went up to Zofia’s coffin, and I looked her right in the eyes. They were closed. The funeral parlor had made her up with blue eyeshadow, and blue eyeliner. She looked like she was going to be a news anchor on Fox television, instead of dead. It was creepy and it made me even sadder than I already was. But I didn’t let that distract me.

“Okay, Zofia,” I whispered. “I know you’re dead, but this is important. You know exactly how important this is. Where’s the handbag? What did you do with it? How do I find it? What am I supposed to do now?”

Of course she didn’t say a word. She just lay there, this little smile on her face, as if she thought the whole thing–death, blue eyeshadow, Jake, the handbag, faeries, Scrabble, Baldeziwurlekistan, all of it–was a joke. She always did have a weird sense of humor. That’s why she and Jake got along so well.

I grew up in a house next door to the house where my mother lived when she was a little girl. Her mother, Zofia Swink, my grandmother, babysat me while my mother and father were at work.

Zofia never looked like a grandmother. She had long black hair which she wore up in little, braided, spiky towers and plaits. She had large blue eyes. She was taller than my father. She looked like a spy or ballerina or a lady pirate or a rock star. She acted like one too. For example, she never drove anywhere. She rode a bike. It drove my mother crazy. “Why can’t you act your age?” she’d say, and Zofia would just laugh.

Zofia and I played Scrabble all the time. Zofia always won, even though her English wasn’t all that great, because we’d decided that she was allowed to use Baldeziwurleki vocabulary. Baldeziwurlekistan is where Zofia was born, over two hundred years ago. That’s what Zofia said. (My grandmother claimed to be over two hundred years old. Or maybe even older. Sometimes she claimed that she’d even met Ghenghis Khan. He was much shorter than her. I probably don’t have time to tell that story.) Baldeziwurlekistan is also an incredibly valuable word in Scrabble points, even though it doesn’t exactly fit on the board. Zofia put it down the first time we played. I was feeling pretty good because I’d gotten forty-one points for “zippery” on my turn.

Zofia kept rearranging her letters on her tray. Then she looked over at me, as if daring me to stop her, and put down “eziwurlekistan”, after “bald.” She used “delicious,” “zippery,” “wishes,” “kismet”, and “needle,” and made “to” into “toe”. “Baldeziwurlekistan” went all the way across the board and then trailed off down the righthand side.

I started laughing.

“I used up all my letters,” Zofia said. She licked her pencil and started adding up points.

“That’s not a word,” I said. “Baldeziwurlekistan is not a word. Besides, you can’t do that. You can’t put an eighteen letter word on a board that’s fifteen squares across.”

“Why not? It’s a country,” Zofia said. “It’s where I was born, little darling.”

“Challenge,” I said. I went and got the dictionary and looked it up. “There’s no such place.”

“Of course there isn’t nowadays,” Zofia said. “It wasn’t a very big place, even when it was a place. But you’ve heard of Samarkand, and Uzbekistan and the Silk Road and Ghenghis Khan. Haven’t I told you about meeting Ghenghis Khan?”

I looked up Samarkand. “Okay,” I said. “Samarkand is a real place. A real word. But Baldeziwurlekistan isn’t.”

“They call it something else now,” Zofia said. “But I think it’s important to remember where we come from. I think it’s only fair that I get to use Baldeziwurleki words. Your English is so much better than me. Promise me something, mouthful of dumpling, a small, small thing. You’ll remember its real name. Baldeziwurlekistan. Now when I add it up, I get three hundred and sixty-eight points. Could that be right?”

If you called the faery handbag by its right name, it would be something like “orzipanikanikcz,” which means the “bag of skin where the world lives,” only Zofia never spelled that word the same way twice. She said you had to spell it a little differently each time. You never wanted to spell it exactly the right way, because that would be dangerous.

I called it the faery handbag because I put “faery” down on the Scrabble board once. Zofia said that you spelled it with an “i,” not an “e”. She looked it up in the dictionary, and lost a turn.

Zofia said that in Baldeziwurlekistan they used a board and tiles for divination, prognostication, and sometimes even just for fun. She said it was a little like playing Scrabble. That’s probably why she turned out to be so good at Scrabble. The Baldeziwurlekistanians used their tiles and board to communicate with the people who lived under the hill. The people who lived under the hill knew the future. The Baldeziwurlekistanians gave them fermented milk and honey, and the young women of the village used to go and lie out on the hill and sleep under the stars. Apparently the people under the hill were pretty cute. The important thing was that you never went down into the hill and spent the night there, no matter how cute the guy from under the hill was. If you did, even if you only spent a single night under the hill, when you came out again a hundred years might have passed. “Remember that,” Zofia said to me. “It doesn’t matter how cute a guy is. If he wants you to come back to his place, it isn’t a good idea. It’s okay to fool around, but don’t spend the night.”

Every once in a while, a woman from under the hill would marry a man from the village, even though it never ended well. The problem was that the women under the hill were terrible cooks. They couldn’t get used to the way time worked in the village, which meant that supper always got burnt, or else it wasn’t cooked long enough. But they couldn’t stand to be criticized. It hurt their feelings. If their village husband complained, or even if he looked like he wanted to complain, that was it. The woman from under the hill went back to her home, and even if her husband went and begged and pleaded and apologized, it might be three years or thirty years or a few generations before she came back out.

Even the best, happiest marriages between the Baldeziwurlekistanians and the people under the hill fell apart when the children got old enough to complain about dinner. But everyone in the village had some hill blood in them.

“It’s in you,” Zofia said, and kissed me on the nose. “Passed down from my grandmother and her mother. It’s why we’re so beautiful.”

When Zofia was nineteen, the shaman-priestess in her village threw the tiles and discovered that something bad was going to happen. A raiding party was coming. There was no point in fighting them. They would burn down everyone’s houses and take the young men and women for slaves. And it was even worse than that. There was going to be an earthquake as well, which was bad news because usually, when raiders showed up, the village went down under the hill for a night and when they came out again the raiders would have been gone for months or decades or even a hundred years. But this earthquake was going to split the hill right open.

The people under the hill were in trouble. Their home would be destroyed, and they would be doomed to roam the face of the earth, weeping and lamenting their fate until the sun blew out and the sky cracked and the seas boiled and the people dried up and turned to dust and blew away. So the shaman-priestess went and divined some more, and the people under the hill told her to kill a black dog and skin it and use the skin to make a purse big enough to hold a chicken, an egg, and a cooking pot. So she did, and then the people under the hill made the inside of the purse big enough to hold all of the village and all of the people under the hill and mountains and forests and seas and rivers and lakes and orchards and a sky and stars and spirits and fabulous monsters and sirens and dragons and dryads and mermaids and beasties and all the little gods that the Baldeziwurlekistanians and the people under the hill worshipped.

“Your purse is made out of dog skin?” I said. “That’s disgusting!”

“Little dear pet,” Zofia said, looking wistful, “Dog is delicious. To Baldeziwurlekistanians, dog is a delicacy.”

Before the raiding party arrived, the village packed up all of their belongings and moved into the handbag. The clasp was made out of bone. If you opened it one way, then it was just a purse big enough to hold a chicken and an egg and a clay cooking pot, or else a pair of reading glasses and a library book and a pillbox. If you opened the clasp another way, then you found yourself in a little boat floating at the mouth of a river. On either side of you was forest, where the Baldeziwurlekistanian villagers and the people under the hill made their new settlement.

If you opened the handbag the wrong way, though, you found yourself in a dark land that smelled like blood. That’s where the guardian of the purse (the dog whose skin had been been sewn into a purse) lived. The guardian had no skin. Its howl made blood come out of your ears and nose. It tore apart anyone who turned the clasp in the opposite direction and opened the purse in the wrong way.

“Here is the wrong way to open the handbag,” Zofia said. She twisted the clasp, showing me how she did it. She opened the mouth of the purse, but not very wide and held it up to me. “Go ahead, darling, and listen for a second.”

I put my head near the handbag, but not too near. I didn’t hear anything. “I don’t hear anything,” I said.

“The poor dog is probably asleep,” Zofia said. “Even nightmares have to sleep now and then.”

After he got expelled, everybody at school called Jake Houdini instead of Jake. Everybody except for me. I’ll explain why, but you have to be patient. It’s hard work telling everything in the right order.

Jake is smarter and also taller than most of our teachers. Not quite as tall as me. We’ve known each other since third grade. Jake has always been in love with me. He says he was in love with me even before third grade, even before we ever met. It took me a while to fall in love with Jake.

In third grade, Jake knew everything already, except how to make friends. He used to follow me around all day long. It made me so mad that I kicked him in the knee. When that didn’t work, I threw his backpack out of the window of the school bus. That didn’t work either, but the next year Jake took some tests and the school decided that he could skip fourth and fifth grade. Even I felt sorry for Jake then. Sixth grade didn’t work out. When the sixth graders wouldn’t stop flushing his head down the toilet, he went out and caught a skunk and set it loose in the boy’s locker room.

The school was going to suspend him for the rest of the year, but instead Jake took two years off while his mother home-schooled him. He learned Latin and Hebrew and Greek, how to write sestinas, how to make sushi, how to play bridge, and even how to knit. He learned fencing and ballroom dancing. He worked in a soup kitchen and made a Super Eight movie about Civil War reenactors who play extreme croquet in full costume instead of firing off cannons. He started learning how to play guitar. He even wrote a novel. I’ve never read it–he says it was awful.

When he came back two years later, because his mother had cancer for the first time, the school put him back with our year, in seventh grade. He was still way too smart, but he was finally smart enough to figure out how to fit in. Plus he was good at soccer and he was really cute. Did I mention that he played guitar? Every girl in school had a crush on Jake, but he used to come home after school with me and play Scrabble with Zofia and ask her about Baldeziwurlekistan.

Jake’s mom was named Cynthia. She collected ceramic frogs and knock-knock jokes. When we were in ninth grade, she had cancer again. When she died, Jake smashed all of her frogs. That was the first funeral I ever went to. A few months later, Jake’s father asked Jake’s fencing teacher out on a date. They got married right after the school expelled Jake for his AP project on Houdini. That was the first wedding I ever went to. Jake and I stole a bottle of wine and drank it, and I threw up in the swimming pool at the country club. Jake threw up all over my shoes.

So, anyway, the village and the people under the hill lived happily every after for a few weeks in the handbag, which they had tied around a rock in a dry well which the people under the hill had determined would survive the earthquake. But some of the Baldeziwurlekistanians wanted to come out again and see what was going on in the world. Zofia was one of them. It had been summer when they went into the bag, but when they came out again, and climbed out of the well, snow was falling and their village was ruins and crumbly old rubble. They walked through the snow, Zofia carrying the handbag, until they came to another village, one that they’d never seen before. Everyone in that village was packing up their belongings and leaving, which gave Zofia and her friends a bad feeling. It seemed to be just the same as when they went into the handbag.

They followed the refugees, who seemed to know where they were going, and finally everyone came to a city. Zofia had ever seen such a place. There were trains and electric lights and movie theaters, and there were people shooting each other. Bombs were falling. A war going on. Most of the villagers decided to climb right back inside the handbag, but Zofia volunteered to stay in the world and look after the handbag. She had fallen in love with movies and silk stockings and with a young man, a Russian deserter.

Zofia and the Russian deserter married and had many adventures and finally came to America, where my mother was born. Now and then Zofia would consult the tiles and talk to the people who lived in the handbag and they would tell her how best to avoid trouble and how she and her husband could make some money. Every now and then one of the Baldeziwurlekistanians, or one of the people from under the hill came out of the handbag and wanted to go grocery shopping, or to a movie or an amusement park to ride on roller coasters, or to the library.

The more advice Zofia gave her husband, the more money they made. Her husband became curious about Zofia’s handbag, because he could see that there was something odd about it, but Zofia told him to mind his own business. He began to spy on Zofia, and saw that strange men and women were coming in and out of the house. He became convinced that either Zofia was a spy for the Communists, or maybe that she was having affairs. They fought and he drank more and more, and finally he threw away her divination tiles. “Russians make bad husbands,” Zofia told me. Finally, one night while Zofia was sleeping, her husband opened the bone clasp and climbed inside the handbag.

“I thought he’d left me,” Zofia said. “For almost twenty years I thought he’d left me and your mother and taken off for California. Not that I minded. I was tired of being married and cooking dinners and cleaning house for someone else. It’s better to cook what I want to eat, and clean up when I decide to clean up. It was harder on your mother, not having a father. That was the part that I minded most.

“Then it turned out that he hadn’t run away after all. He’d spent one night in the handbag and then come out again twenty years later, exactly as handsome as I remembered, and enough time had passed that I had forgiven him all the quarrels. We made up and it was all very romantic and then when we had another fight the next morning, he went and kissed your mother, who had slept right through his visit, on the cheek, and then he climbed right back inside the handbag. I didn’t see him again for another twenty years. The last time he showed up, we went to see “Star Wars” and he liked it so much that he went back inside the handbag to tell everyone else about it. In a couple of years they’ll all show up and want to see it on video and all of the sequels too.”

“Tell them not to bother with the prequels,” I said.

The thing about Zofia and libraries is that she’s always losing library books. She says that she hasn’t lost them, and in fact that they aren’t even overdue, really. It’s just that even one week inside the faery handbag is a lot longer in library-world time. So what is she supposed to do about it? The librarians all hate Zofia. She’s banned from using any of the branches in our area. When I was eight, she got me to go to the library for her and check out a bunch of biographies and science books and some Georgette Heyer romance novels. My mother was livid when she found out, but it was too late. Zofia had already misplaced most of them.

It’s really hard to write about somebody as if they’re really dead. I still think Zofia must be sitting in her living room, in her house, watching some old horror movie, dropping popcorn into her handbag. She’s waiting for me to come over and play Scrabble.

Nobody is ever going to return those library books now.

My mother used to come home from work and roll her eyes. “Have you been telling them your fairy stories?” she’d say. “Genevieve, your grandmother is a horrible liar.”

Zofia would fold up the Scrabble board and shrug at me and Jake. “I’m a wonderful liar,” she’d say. “I’m the best liar in the world. Promise me you won’t believe a single word.”

But she wouldn’t tell the story of the faery handbag to Jake. Only the old Baldeziwurlekistanian folktales and fairytales about the people under the hill. She told him about how she and her husband made it all the way across Europe, hiding in haystacks and in barns, and how once, when her husband went off to find food, a farmer found her hiding in his chicken coop and tried to rape her. But she opened up the faery handbag in the way she showed me, and the dog came out and ate the farmer and all his chickens too.

She was teaching Jake and me how to curse in Baldeziwurleki. I also know how to say I love you, but I’m not going to ever say it to anyone again, except to Jake, when I find him.

When I was eight, I believed everything Zofia told me. By the time I was thirteen, I didn’t believe a single word. When I was fifteen, I saw a man come out of her house and get on Zofia’s three-speed bicycle and ride down the street. His clothes looked funny. He was a lot younger than my mother and father, and even though I’d never seen him before, he was familiar. I followed him on my bike, all the way to the grocery store. I waited just past the checkout lanes while he bought peanut butter, Jack Daniels, half a dozen instant cameras, and at least sixty packs of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, three bags of Hershey’s kisses, a handful of Milky Way bars and other stuff from the rack of checkout candy. While the checkout clerk was helping him bag up all of that chocolate, he looked up and saw me. “Genevieve?” he said. “That’s your name, right?”

I turned and ran out of the store. He grabbed up the bags and ran after me. I don’t even think he got his change back. I was still running away, and then one of the straps on my flip flops popped out of the sole, the way they do, and that made me really angry so I just stopped. I turned around.

“Who are you?” I said.

But I already knew. He looked like he could have been my mom’s younger brother. He was really cute. I could see why Zofia had fallen in love with him.

His name was Rustan. Zofia told my parents that he was an expert in Baldeziwurlekistanian folklore who would be staying with her for a few days. She brought him over for dinner. Jake was there too, and I could tell that Jake knew something was up. Everybody except my dad knew something was going on.

“You mean Baldeziwurlekistan is a real place?” my mother asked Rustan. “My mother is telling the truth?”

I could see that Rustan was having a hard time with that one. He obviously wanted to say that his wife was a horrible liar, but then where would he be? Then he couldn’t be the person that he was supposed to be.

There were probably a lot of things that he wanted to say. What he said was, “This is really good pizza.”

Rustan took a lot of pictures at dinner. The next day I went with him to get the pictures developed. He’d brought back some film with him, with pictures he’d taken inside the faery handbag, but those didn’t come out well. Maybe the film was too old. We got doubles of the pictures from dinner so that I could have some too. There’s a great picture of Jake, sitting outside on the porch. He’s laughing, and he has his hand up to his mouth, like he’s going to catch the laugh. I have that picture up on my computer, and also up on my wall over my bed.

I bought a Cadbury Cream Egg for Rustan. Then we shook hands and he kissed me once on each cheek. “Give one of those kisses to your mother,” he said, and I thought about how the next time I saw him, I might be Zofia’s age, and he would only be a few days older. The next time I saw him, Zofia would be dead. Jake and I might have kids. That was too weird.

I know Rustan tried to get Zofia to go with him, to live in the handbag, but she wouldn’t.

“It makes me dizzy in there,” she used to tell me. “And they don’t have movie theaters. And I have to look after your mother and you. Maybe when you’re old enough to look after the handbag, I’ll poke my head inside, just long enough for a little visit.”

I didn’t fall in love with Jake because he was smart. I’m pretty smart myself. I know that smart doesn’t mean nice, or even mean that you have a lot of common sense. Look at all the trouble smart people get themselves into.

I didn’t fall in love with Jake because he could make maki rolls and had a black belt in fencing, or whatever it is that you get if you’re good in fencing. I didn’t fall in love with Jake because he plays guitar. He’s a better soccer player than he is a guitar player.

Those were the reasons why I went out on a date with Jake. That, and because he asked me. He asked if I wanted to go see a movie, and I asked if I could bring my grandmother and Natalie and Natasha. He said sure and so all five of us sat and watched “Bring It On” and every once in a while Zofia dropped a couple of milk duds or some popcorn into her purse. I don’t know if she was feeding the dog, or if she’d opened the purse the right way, and was throwing food at her husband.

I fell in love with Jake because he told stupid knock-knock jokes to Natalie, and told Natasha that he liked her jeans. I fell in love with Jake when he took me and Zofia home. He walked her up to her front door and then he walked me up to mine. I fell in love with Jake when he didn’t try to kiss me. The thing is, I was nervous about the whole kissing thing. Most guys think that they’re better at it than they really are. Not that I think I’m a real genius at kissing either, but I don’t think kissing should be a competitive sport. It isn’t tennis.

Natalie and Natasha and I used to practice kissing with each other. Not that we like each other that way, but just for practice. We got pretty good at it. We could see why kissing was supposed to be fun.

But Jake didn’t try to kiss me. Instead he just gave me this really big hug. He put his face in my hair and he sighed. We stood there like that, and then finally I said, “What are you doing?”

“I just wanted to smell your hair,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. That made me feel weird, but in a good way. I put my nose up to his hair, which is brown and curly, and I smelled it. We stood there and smelled each other’s hair, and I felt so good. I felt so happy.

Jake said into my hair, “Do you know that actor John Cusack?”

I said, “Yeah. One of Zofia’s favorite movies is ‘Better Off Dead.’ We watch it all the time.”

“So he likes to go up to women and smell their armpits.”

“Gross!” I said. “That’s such a lie! What are you doing now? That tickles.”

“I’m smelling your ear,” Jake said.

Jake’s hair smelled like iced tea with honey in it, after all the ice has melted.

Kissing Jake is like kissing Natalie or Natasha, except that it isn’t just for fun. It feels like something there isn’t a word for in Scrabble.

The deal with Houdini is that Jake got interested in him during Advanced Placement American History. He and I were both put in tenth grade history. We were doing biography projects. I was studying Joseph McCarthy. My grandmother had all sorts of stories about McCarthy. She hated him for what he did to Hollywood.

Jake didn’t turn in his project–instead he told everyone in our AP class except for Mr. Streep (we call him Meryl) to meet him at the gym on Saturday. When we showed up, Jake reenacted one of Houdini’s escapes with a laundry bag, handcuffs, a gym locker, bicycle chains, and the school’s swimming pool. It took him three and a half minutes to get free, and this guy named Roger took a bunch of photos and then put the photos online. One of the photos ended up in the Boston Globe, and Jake got expelled. The really ironic thing was that while his mom was in the hospital, Jake had applied to M.I.T. He did it for his mom. He thought that way she’d have to stay alive. She was so excited about M.I.T. A couple of days after he’d been expelled, right after the wedding, while his dad and the fencing instructor were in Bermuda, he got an acceptance letter in the mail and a phone call from this guy in the admissions office who explained why they had to withdraw the acceptance.

My mother wanted to know why I let Jake wrap himself up in bicycle chains and then watched while Peter and Michael pushed him into the deep end of the school pool. I said that Jake had a backup plan. Ten more seconds and we were all going to jump into the pool and open the locker and get him out of there. I was crying when I said that. Even before he got in the locker, I knew how stupid Jake was being. Afterwards, he promised me that he’d never do anything like that again.

That was when I told him about Zofia’s husband, Rustan, and about Zofia’s handbag. How stupid am I?

So I guess you can figure out what happened next. The problem is that Jake believed me about the handbag. We spent a lot of time over at Zofia’s, playing Scrabble. Zofia never let the faery handbag out of her sight. She even took it with her when she went to the bathroom. I think she even slept with it under her pillow.

I didn’t tell her that I’d said anything to Jake. I wouldn’t ever have told anybody else about it. Not Natasha. Not even Natalie, who is the most responsible person in all of the world. Now, of course, if the handbag turns up and Jake still hasn’t come back, I’ll have to tell Natalie. Somebody has to keep an eye on the stupid thing while I go find Jake.

What worries me is that maybe one of the Baldeziwurlekistanians or one of the people under the hill or maybe even Rustan popped out of the handbag to run an errand and got worried when Zofia wasn’t there. Maybe they’ll come looking for her and bring it back. Maybe they know I’m supposed to look after it now. Or maybe they took it and hid it somewhere. Maybe someone turned it in at the lost-and-found at the library and that stupid librarian called the F.B.I. Maybe scientists at the Pentagon are examining the handbag right now. Testing it. If Jake comes out, they’ll think he’s a spy or a superweapon or an alien or something. They’re not going to just let him go.

Everyone thinks Jake ran away, except for my mother, who is convinced that he was trying out another Houdini escape and is probably lying at the bottom of a lake somewhere. She hasn’t said that to me, but I can see her thinking it. She keeps making cookies for me.

What happened is that Jake said, “Can I see that for just a second?”

He said it so casually that I think he caught Zofia off guard. She was reaching into the purse for her wallet. We were standing in the lobby of the movie theater on a Monday morning. Jake was behind the snack counter. He’d gotten a job there. He was wearing this stupid red paper hat and some kind of apron-bib thing. He was supposed to ask us if we wanted to supersize our drinks.

He reached over the counter and took Zofia’s handbag right out of her hand. He closed it and then he opened it again. I think he opened it the right way. I don’t think he ended up in the dark place. He said to me and Zofia, “I’ll be right back.” And then he wasn’t there anymore. It was just me and Zofia and the handbag, lying there on the counter where he’d dropped it.

If I’d been fast enough, I think I could have followed him. But Zofia had been guardian of the faery handbag for a lot longer. She snatched the bag back and glared at me. “He’s a very bad boy,” she said. She was absolutely furious. “You’re better off without him, Genevieve, I think.”

“Give me the handbag,” I said. “I have to go get him.”

“It isn’t a toy, Genevieve,” she said. “It isn’t a game. This isn’t Scrabble. He comes back when he comes back. If he comes back.”

“Give me the handbag,” I said. “Or I’ll take it from you.”

She held the handbag up high over her head, so that I couldn’t reach it. I hate people who are taller than me. “What are you going to do now,” Zofia said. “Are you going to knock me down? Are you going to steal the handbag? Are you going to go away and leave me here to explain to your parents where you’ve gone? Are you going to say goodbye to your friends? When you come out again, they will have gone to college. They’ll have jobs and babies and houses and they won’t even recognize you. Your mother will be an old woman and I will be dead.”

“I don’t care,” I said. I sat down on the sticky red carpet in the lobby and started to cry. Someone wearing a little metal name tag came over and asked if we were okay. His name was Missy. Or maybe he was wearing someone else’s tag.

“We’re fine,” Zofia said. “My granddaughter has the flu.”

She took my hand and pulled me up. She put her arm around me and we walked out of the theater. We never even got to see the stupid movie. We never even got to see another movie together. I don’t ever want to go see another movie. The problem is, I don’t want to see unhappy endings. And I don’t know if I believe in the happy ones.

“I have a plan,” Zofia said. “I will go find Jake. You will stay here and look after the handbag.”

“You won’t come back either,” I said. I cried even harder. Or if you do, I’ll be like a hundred years old and Jake will still be sixteen.”

“Everything will be okay,” Zofia said. I wish I could tell you how beautiful she looked right then. It didn’t matter if she was lying or if she actually knew that everything was going to be okay. The important thing was how she looked when she said it. She said, with absolute certainty, or maybe with all the skill of a very skillful liar, “My plan will work. First we go to the library, though. One of the people under the hill just brought back an Agatha Christie mystery, and I need to return it.”

“We’re going to the library?” I said. “Why don’t we just go home and play Scrabble for a while.” You probably think I was just being sarcastic here, and I was being sarcastic. But Zofia gave me a sharp look. She knew that if I was being sarcastic that my brain was working again. She knew that I knew she was stalling for time. She knew that I was coming up with my own plan, which was a lot like Zofia’s plan, except that I was the one who went into the handbag. How was the part I was working on.

“We could do that,” she said. “Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.”

“Can we please just hurry?” I said.

Zofia just looked at me. “Genevieve, we have plenty of time. If you’re going to look after the handbag, you have to remember that. You have to be patient. Can you be patient?”

“I can try,” I told her. I’m trying, Zofia. I’m trying really hard. But it isn’t fair. Jake is off having adventures and talking to talking animals, and who knows, learning how to fly and some beautiful three thousand year old girl from under the hill is teaching him how to speak fluent Baldeziwurleki. I bet she lives in a house that runs around on chicken legs, and she tells Jake that she’d love to hear him play something on the guitar. Maybe you’ll kiss her, Jake, because she’s put a spell on you. But whatever you do, don’t go up into her house. Don’t fall asleep in her bed. Come back soon, Jake, and bring the handbag with you.

I hate those movies, those books, where some guy gets to go off and have adventures and meanwhile the girl has to stay home and wait. I’m a feminist. I subscribe to Bust magazine, and I watch Buffy reruns. I don’t believe in that kind of shit.

We hadn’t been in the library for five minutes before Zofia picked up a biography of Carl Sagan and dropped it in her purse. She was definitely stalling for time. She was trying to come up with a plan that would counteract the plan that she knew I was planning. I wondered what she thought I was planning. It was probably much better than anything I’d come up with.

“Don’t do that!” I said.

“Don’t worry,” Zofia said. “Nobody was watching.”

“I don’t care if nobody saw! What if Jake’s sitting there in the boat, or what if he was coming back and you just dropped it on his head!”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Zofia said. Then she said, “It would serve him right, anyway.”

That was when the librarian came up to us. She had a nametag on as well. I was so sick of people and their stupid nametags. I’m not even going to tell you what her name was. “I saw that,” the librarian said.

“Saw what?” Zofia said. She smiled down at the librarian, like she was Queen of the Library, and the librarian were a petitioner.

The librarian stared hard at her. “I know you,” she said, almost sounding awed, like she was a weekend birdwatcher who just seen Bigfoot. “We have your picture on the office wall. You’re Ms. Swinks. You aren’t allowed to check out books here.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Zofia said. She was at least two feet taller than the librarian. I felt a bit sorry for the librarian. After all, Zofia had just stolen a seven-day book. She probably wouldn’t return it for a hundred years. My mother has always made it clear that it’s my job to protect other people from Zofia. I guess I was Zofia’s guardian before I became the guardian of the handbag.

The librarian reached up and grabbed Zofia’s handbag. She was small but she was strong. She jerked the handbag and Zofia stumbled and fell back against a work desk. I couldn’t believe it. Everyone except for me was getting a look at Zofia’s handbag. What kind of guardian was I going to be?

“Genevieve,” Zofia said. She held my hand very tightly, and I looked at her. She looked wobbly and pale. She said, “I feel very bad about all of this. Tell your mother I said so.”

Then she said one last thing, but I think it was in Baldeziwurleki.

The librarian said, “I saw you put a book in here. Right here.” She opened the handbag and peered inside. Out of the handbag came a long, lonely, ferocious, utterly hopeless scream of rage. I don’t ever want to hear that noise again. Everyone in the library looked up. The librarian made a choking noise and threw Zofia’s handbag away from her. A little trickle of blood came out of her nose and a drop fell on the floor. What I thought at first was that it was just plain luck that the handbag was closed when it landed. Later on I was trying to figure out what Zofia said. My Baldeziwurleki isn’t very good, but I think she was saying something like “Figures. Stupid librarian. I have to go take care of that damn dog.” So maybe that’s what happened. Maybe Zofia sent part of herself in there with the skinless dog. Maybe she fought it and won and closed the handbag. Maybe she made friends with it. I mean, she used to feed it popcorn at the movies. Maybe she’s still in there.

What happened in the library was Zofia sighed a little and closed her eyes. I helped her sit down in a chair, but I don’t think she was really there any more. I rode with her in the ambulance, when the ambulance finally showed up, and I swear I didn’t even think about the handbag until my mother showed up. I didn’t say a word. I just left her there in the hospital with Zofia, who was on a respirator, and I ran all the way back to the library. But it was closed. So I ran all the way back again, to the hospital, but you already know what happened, right? Zofia died. I hate writing that. My tall, funny, beautiful, book-stealing, Scrabble-playing, story-telling grandmother died.

But you never met her. You’re probably wondering about the handbag. What happened to it. I put up signs all over town, like Zofia’s handbag was some kind of lost dog, but nobody ever called.

So that’s the story so far. Not that I expect you to believe any of it. Last night Natalie and Natasha came over and we played Scrabble. They don’t really like Scrabble, but they feel like it’s their job to cheer me up. I won. After they went home, I flipped all the tiles upside-down and then I started picking them up in groups of seven. I tried to ask a question, but it was hard to pick just one. The words I got weren’t so great either, so I decided that they weren’t English words. They were Baldeziwurleki words.

Once I decided that, everything became perfectly clear. First I put down “kirif” which means “happy news”, and then I got a “b,” an “o,” an “l,” an “e,” a “f,” another “i,” an “s,” and a “z.” So then I could make “kirif” into “bolekirifisz,” which could mean “the happy result of a combination of diligent effort and patience.”

I would find the faery handbag. The tiles said so. I would work the clasp and go into the handbag and have my own adventures and would rescue Jake. Hardly any time would have gone by before we came back out of the handbag. Maybe I’d even make friends with that poor dog and get to say goodbye, for real, to Zofia. Rustan would show up again and be really sorry that he’d missed Zofia’s funeral and this time he would be brave enough to tell my mother the whole story. He would tell her that he was her father. Not that she would believe him. Not that you should believe this story. Promise me that you won’t believe a word.

[koinekid]

Kame Island Romance: The Article Part 2

Yesterday, I received a promotion at work. My new position has a lot more responsibility and a not-insignificant pay bump. To celebrate, here is a long overdue chapter of Kame Island Romance: The Article. This one is entirely from Krillin’s point-of-view.

Read below or follow the link to FanFiction.Net

<<>>

Rights to Dragonball and related properties are held by their respective owners. No infringement is implied or intended.

Kame Island Romance

By koinekid

1. The Article

Part 2

“We could bribe them,” Yamcha suggested.

“With what?” Krillin said. “I spent all my cash on snacks for tonight.”

As Yamcha fished his pocket for his wallet, Krillin watched his roommates help themselves to another bag of pretzels meant for his guests. All day long, Roshi and Oolong parked in front of the television, consuming their usual fare and evading questions about their plans for the evening.

The TV didn’t bother him. Krillin tuned it out while he and Eighteen busied themselves in the kitchen, working through a stack of board games he dug out of the closet on Wednesday. Since partnering up, she insisted they dedicate every spare moment to “training” for game night. And because Eighteen required so little sleep, she had plenty of moments to spare. Krillin on the other hand…

Following hours of nonstop gameplay that first night, his yawning became too conspicuous to hide. Eighteen, looking abashed, rose from the table without warning. Krillin worried he had offended her, but before he could apologize, she returned and set a mug of instant coffee in front of him. Touched by her simple (and unprecedented) gesture, he wasted no time raising the mug to his lips.

The coffee tasted awful. Eighteen spooned in too many granules and underheated the water. But Krillin drained the cup anyway, and the caffeine kept him awake long enough for Eighteen to earn her first Scrabble victory. Witnessing her genuine delight at finally beating him was worth losing a few hours’ sleep, and though he probably should have discouraged her gloating, he couldn’t suppress a grin as she pumped her fist in celebration.

Thursday morning, he found her at the table studying the printed instructions for the games they had yet to play. He sensed her impatience to continue, but she didn’t press, and he thanked her with a modest breakfast of cereal and juice. No coffee. By the time their bleary-eyed roommates joined them, Eighteen was setting up for Monopoly.

Her preemptive glare silenced any of their potential complaints—at least about the game board. Roshi finally got around to spot-checking the previous day’s grocery receipt and grilled her about the purchase of a certain magazine. Eighteen cooly suggested he regard such expenses as her delivery fee.

Friday afternoon brought another interruption as Yamcha arrived to pick up Krillin for a trip to the supermarket. The two had agreed to shop for snacks and talk strategy in the hours prior to the event. Eighteen wasn’t pleased and told Krillin to hurry back, taking his hand and slipping him her store discount card and a couple of capsules.

He tried to avoid reading too much into her actions: a hasty return meant more time to practice before their guests arrived; the card directed them to the market nearest the island; the capsules enabled them to fly rather than take the slower air car. And the fact that she held his hand longer than necessary with her thumb ever so slightly stroking his palm?

“She digs you, bro,” Yamcha insisted on the way to the market, and Krillin was starting to believe him. At the very least, he intended to give the mystery guy she was dating the fight of his life.

Back home, while Yamcha negotiated with Roshi and Oolong, Krillin wandered to the doorway separating the living room from the kitchen. He found Eighteen as he left her, leaning against the table and shuffling a deck of cards. With a crook of her finger, she beckoned him to join her.

“I should stay close in case Yamcha needs backup.” He gestured to the living room.

“You could do that.” Eighteen nodded, her pearl drop earrings dancing with the movement. She had forgone her usual hoops for a pair matching her favorite necklace. “Or you could let the ballplayer handle the pervs and hang out here. Assuming you aren’t sick of me.”

He gave her his best you-must-be-kidding-me look. “Never.”

“Are you sure? We’ve spent a lot of time together lately.”

“And I wouldn’t trade a minute of it.”

A smile blossomed on Eighteen’s face, and Krillin found himself struck by her beauty. Never unattractive, she had taken special care with her appearance tonight, ditching her usual blue denim and opting for a pink sweater and black slacks. It was the most overtly feminine outfit he’d ever seen her wear, and he took satisfaction that she chose it for an event he asked her to attend.

“Eighteen?”

“Yes, Krillin?” She set down the cards.

“You look—” He cataloged the words he wanted to use—gorgeous, breathtaking, perfect—before settling on— “beautiful. I just thought you should know.”

She murmured a thank-you so quiet he almost missed it. But the rosy hue of her cheeks said what her voice could not.

The whole scheme of game night seemed suddenly foolish to Krillin. He should tell Eighteen how he felt and let the pieces fall where they may. What’s the worst that could happen?

She could reject him, storm out, and move in with her ridiculously rich, six-foot-tall boyfriend.

No, something in that moment told Krillin that’s not at all what would occur.

He opened his mouth to speak when the voices from the living room reached a new volume. Before he could stop himself, he glanced back.

Soft laughter drew his attention to Eighteen. “Sounds like someone needs backup. Better go rescue him, hero.”

Krillin shook his head. “No, you were right. Yamcha can handle himself. I—“

“You would never abandon a friend, Krillin. I know that firsthand, and it’s one of the things I admire most about you.”

“But—“

“I’ll be here when you get back. Now, go before I change my mind.”

He wanted to plow ahead and reveal his feelings, but Eighteen was paying him a huge compliment. The last thing he should do was prove her wrong by leaving a friend to fend for himself—even if that friend would agree with his decision.

“Krillin,” she called out as he headed for the door. “I just wanted to say that you...look good too.”

Glancing down at the khakis and blue Oxford he changed into upon his return from the market, he shrugged. “Clothes make the man.”

She bit her lip.“I wasn’t talking about the clothes.”

As he blinked in surprise, she seated herself at the table and began an intense study of her deck of playing cards. He recalled one of their Scrabble rounds from a couple of days ago. During gameplay, he caught her staring at him more than once. Whenever he met her gaze, her eyes dropped to study the letter tiles on her rack with as much attention as she now gave the cards. At the time, he thought she was searching for a tell on what passed for his poker face. What if she was just staring because...?

Because...

He entered the living room with a bounce to his step. She thinks I’m handsome. She actually thinks—

Yamcha’s growl of frustration interrupted Krillin’s thoughts. Any progress his friend had made on getting the others out the door was apparently quite minimal.

“Come on, guys,” Yamcha said. “I already gave you enough for a decent meal.”

Roshi shook his head. “It isn’t every day one of my beloved students declares his intent for a gorgeous babe. This demands a five-star restaurant.”

“You told them!” Krillin said.

“He sure did,” Oolong replied. “And we’re holding a celebration in your honor. Got any singles?”

Krillin glared at Yamcha.

“Sorry, bro. They wouldn’t even consider leaving without an explanation.”

“It’s not like it’s much of a shock.” Oolong snorted. “The way you two are mooning over one another lately...it’s frankly disgusting.”

Roshi hopped off the couch and threw an arm around Krillin. “My boy, I’m proud of you. It’s about time you made a move, and you couldn’t find a better girl if you asked the dragon for one.”

“Master, is your hand in my pocket?”

“I, er—“

“If you’re looking for my wallet, as I said earlier, I spent all my money on those snacks you two have been shoveling in. I’m tapped.”

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

“Well, good luck, boy.” Roshi hopped back on the couch.

Krillin looked to Yamcha, who sighed and over-dramatically retrieved the wallet from his pocket. Roshi stood in front of him in a heartbeat, palm extended, and Yamcha handed over a fistful of zenni. Oolong replaced Roshi a moment later.

“That was for both of you,” Yamcha protested, but the pig only made a gimme motion.

“And we’ll need a ride to the mainland,” Oolong said. “The old man lost the capsule containing our air car.”

“Fine, fine,” Yamcha said. “I have to pick up my date anyway.” To himself, he muttered, “And stop by an ATM.” At Roshi and Oolong’s excited looks, he amended, “After I drop off you two.”

As Yamcha started to lead his entourage out of the living room, Krillin thought he spied a flash of blonde hair in the doorway. He narrowed his eyes, but as he entered the kitchen, he found Eighteen seated at the table exactly as he left her. She looked as if she hadn’t moved a centimeter.

On his way past, Yamcha paused at the table. “Eighteen, would you mind helping Krillin set up for game night. I’d do it myself but I’ve been corralled into playing chauffeur.”

Eighteen rolled her eyes. “Why not? I thought I was a guest, but apparently I’m a host as well.”

“You’re a lifesaver,” he said. “I should be back before the others arrive. You two behave yourselves in the meantime.”

He winked at Krillin, and Roshi offered a thumbs-up as they departed.

When the door closed, Krillin came to stand next to Eighteen. He debated asking what she overheard but figured she would bring it up if she wanted to. Forcing the issue would only lead to an awkward conversation. He also abandoned the notion of confessing his feelings. For now, the moment had passed.

“You don’t really have to help set up,” he said. “I can manage by myself.”

Her irritated brow smoothed. “I don’t mind. Kame House is my home too, and how it looks reflects on me.”

“Thanks.” Something clicked into place for Krillin. “Wait, you were just giving Yamcha a hard time, weren’t you?”

She shrugged. “Can’t have our friends thinking I’ve grown soft.”

“You? Impossible. One of us has to be the badass.”

“One of us?”

“Uh, I—I mean...”

“I like that. We are partners, after all.”

He offered a hand. “Well then, partner, care to join me in whipping this place into shape?”

She placed her hand in his. “Krillin, I’m all yours.”

<<>>

To be continued

Thanks for reading; reviews, like, reblogs, etc. are appreciated. 

Thanks to @chestnutisland and @deadlybeautydbz for keeping the flames of the fandom burning steadily.

[greengargouille]

Korotan A: chapter 6

(Hello everyone! In Nagisa and Terasaka’s quest toward better English skills, they went during last chapter to the land of dreams that is America. But Japan also have places where dreams do come true, and those places are maid cafés!

Also, there is Karma in this chapter. I thought some of you would like to know.

This chapter wouldn’t be possible without @blazardragon​, or at least not with this quality. As always, thank you for this! (Blazard is also working on Korotan D, by the way. Everyone go check it out!))

Chapter 6: At the maid café on Saturday

Terasaka was getting ready to leave the school building when Nagisa called out to him.

“Terasaka! -What? -Don’t you want to study together for Monday’s English exam? I’m a bit anxious...” Nagisa told him. “Dumbass, there’s nothing to do with vocabulary besides memorise it! -But if we study together by asking each other questions, it will be faster! -Try to handle it by yourself, it’s only English vocabulary after all.” replied Terasaka with a weird face. “As for me, I have things to do this afternoon!”

On those words, Terasaka walked away with huge steps. Nagisa continued following him with his eyes as he crossed the courtyard.

Worrying about Nagisa blanking out, Kayano spoke to him.

“What happened, Nagisa? -I said to Terasaka that we should study together, but he refused by pretending he had things to do. -’Things to do’, let’s see... Ah!?”

Kayano clapped her hands when she understood something by looking at Terasaka from afar. “Look, look!” Kayano pointed to Terasaka, who was discussing with Takebayashi. “So that was it...” Nagisa understood immediately what Kayano meant to say. “Let’s follow them! -Yes!”

They followed Terasaka and Takebayashi who descended the mountain on which was their school building. Once at the train station, they made sure the two boys took the train and followed suit.

At the moment the doors were closing, Karma jumped inside.

“Hello! Are you playing detectives?” he said to them. “Of course not.” explained Nagisa. “We’re chasing Terasaka to study English vocabulary together... And you, why are you here? -Because you two looked defenseless walking together. I thought you might need protection and it would be a good opportunity to go fish for some scum, who won’t fail to catch you up. -Scum fishing...” repeated Kayano, jaded.

After travelling by train, they continued to follow Terasaka and Takebayashi when the two stopped in their tracks...

“Just as we thought!” Nagisa and Kayano shouted with a knowing look. “They’re in front of the Shirokuro maid café! -Let’s go!” said Nagisa. “Wait, we’re going in there, you sure?” asked Kayano. “If we don’t take action, they might do something foolish!”

Nagisa entered the maid café without hesitation. “So this is one of those maid cafés I’ve heard so much about!” With an interested look, Karma inspected the entrance before going in, and Kayano followed him nervously.

“Welcome, master!” Maids in a gothic¹ costume greeted them.

The atmosphere impressed Nagisa who shivered an instant. “How cute!” They said at the same time. Nagisa and Kayano were surrounded by multiple maids, who repeated endlessly “cute”, “cute”. Karma put some distance with them and looked at the scene with an amused look.

“Such a cute master, I’m so happy!” A maid with cat ears lead the three of them at a table. Nagisa looked here and there. “So that’s what a maid café looks like! -It’s your first time coming here, Nagisa?” asked Karma. “Of course! -It’s also my first time...” Kayano found necessary to inform them, while she looked at all the cute decorations with surprised eyes. “I don’t see Terasaka nor Takebayashi. -They might be near the back.” said Karma. “Let’s get a closer look then...” suggested Nagisa.

Just as he tried to stand up, a cat-eared maid brought the menu. “What will you choose, master? -Well, it’s, that is to say...” Not used to being called ‘master’, Nagisa, flushed red, glanced at the menu opened by the maid. “There’s more than tea and ice cream cups... Ah, there’s also games!” Nagisa thought out loud. “Yes, there is! ‘Transformation into a Moe Moe maid’, ‘Moe Moe thrill game’, ‘Moe Moe punishment’...”

As the maid listed all the games, Kayano patted Nagisa’s arm and told him: “There’s Terasaka and Takebayashi!”

The two were seated at the back of the restaurant. When their drinks came, a maid blew on their cup of hot tea. In total opposition with his attitude in class, Takebayashi stuck out his chest and seemed relaxed. Inversely, Terasaka smiled nervously and showed a nervous face

“Takebayashi clearly is the ‘King of Moe’. However, Terasaka has no class. -Uh... Doesn’t Terasaka have a normal reaction, actually?”

Takebayashi reacted upon hearing Nagisa’s voice.

“Nagisa? What are you all doing here? -We should study our English, right?” replied Nagisa. “Let me have my Saturday to have fun! And stop following me!” specified Terasaka. “If you’re fluent with your vocabulary then it’s fine by me, but are you confident enough? -Yes I am.” affirmed Terasaka. “Then let’s test you... A ‘Moe Moe Scrabble’, please!’ ordered Nagisa to the waitress, then added: “You need to put letters together like for crosswords. If you use the Q or Z, you’ll get a lot of points. -Thank you for your order! If you get a good score at the ‘Moe Moe Scrabble’, you will get a comfort-gift from our maids. -Woah, that’s worth it!” claimed Terasaka with a big smile.

A maid with cat ears brought the Scrabble. Under her eyes, Nagisa and the others put letters together.

“You will be able to admire my speciality.” Takebayashi showed off while placing a word and making his glasses sparkle. “‘DIMENSIONAL’... What does that means?” asked Nagisa. “It comes from ‘Dimension’. The D in ‘2D’ is from ‘Dimension’. -That’s quite a move, Takebayashi! -Then what do you think about this?”

Terasaka lined up his letters one after the other.

“‘QUIZ’! It have both a Q and a Z, impressive!” said Nagisa. “Well, it was written here.” explained Terasaka, pointing to the menu displayed on the wall: ‘Moe Moe Quiz with the maids!’. “You’re cheating!” claimed Kayano. “Eh eh! No rule stopping you from looking at the walls.” snickered Terasaka.

The cat-eared maid counted the points: “Impressive! More than twenty points! -It’s your turn, maid!” suggested Nagisa.

The word she placed on the gameboard was ‘TENTACLES’. “Uh?” Nagisa observed the maid and finally noticed she was actually Korosensei in a costume!

“Please relax and enjoy a good shoulder massage! -It’s you!” said Terasaka while pushing back the tentacles fondling his shoulders. “Even I can’t feel a thing for an octopus maid. -Don’t be upset, let’s have some fun in the land of Moe!”

Korosensei sat down at Terasaka’s table to enjoy a cup of ice cream.

“Strangely, you’re the one blending in the most with your surroundings, Korosensei!” said Terasaka.

While keeping an eye on Terasaka, Nagisa lined up letters to form the word ‘MEID’. “Nagisa, what’s this?” asked Korosensei. “‘Maid’, like in ‘Maid café’...” replied Nagisa. “It’s wrong.” replied Terasaka immediately, then continued. “The correct word is ‘MAID’ with an A. Misspelling ‘maid’ in a maid café, that takes the cake! You deserves a punishment! -What!? -Look at their menu. There’s a whole part for punishment games, isn’t there? Choose one!” added Korosensei. “Then, this one!” replied Nagisa while pointing toward the ‘Moe Moe Russian roulette’ game. “What, what, why did you order that?” asked Korosensei. “Well it’s written here: ‘Among the doll-shaped cakes is one really spicy cake’. I love this version of the Russian roulette!” Nagisa said with enthusiasm.

The maid brought a plate on which were multiple cakes.

“This’s a fun event, the games here are a bit old-fashioned but amusing! So, which one should I take?” Nagisa slowly said. Korosensei, distracted by the sweets, asked curiously: “Why do you like that game so much? -That doesn’t concern you…” replied Nagisa, irritated. “While we’re at it, we might as well all play together! It’ll be more fun that way.” suggested Korosensei.

The cat-eared maid explained the rules of the game: “You need to eat your cake in one bite. That’s the point of the ‘Moe Moe Russian roulette’!”

At her signal, Terasaka, Takebayashi, Nagisa, Kayano, Karma, Korosensei and the maid as well each ate a cake.

“This one is good! Who’s the unlucky one?” asked Kayano. “Unfortunately it’s not me. When you’re lucky enough to get the spicy cake, you win a reward.” explained Takebayashi.

As soon as he explained, Terasaka coughed.

“What is this thing? It’s super spicy! -One of the cakes has a strong dose of ‘Bhut Jolokia’ pepper.” explained the maid. “That’s also one of my best stratagems!” shouted Karma while pulling two peppers from his bag. “Seriously!?”

Terasaka drank a big glass of water then attacked Korosensei’s cup of ice cream. But he suddenly stopped and coughed again.

“What is this thing? It’s super spicy! -You idiot. I had prepared it specially for Korosensei, but you ended up eating it...” said Karma with a devilish smile.

(¹The use of ‘gothic’ both troubled blazard and I, but this seems to be in the original text. Yet the illustrations (and the part about the café in chapter 78/those special OVA from season 2) show the uniform is pretty much classic maid. Looking around, it seems Japanese Goth fashion tends to be more elaborated, with tendencies toward long skirts and lace (is this an influence from Gothic Lolita?). Anyways, it’s probably best not to think about it too much. Just think of your classic maid.)

((Note: Next chapter might take some time, as it’s baseball-related, and as a good French I don’t know a thing about baseball, so finding which word is the translation of what is a bit... difficult.))

[surveysonfleek]

497.

5000 Question Survey Pt. 25

2301. Who is the hottest celebrity you can think of? i honestly don’t have many celeb crushes anymore. 2302. Have you ever been to the following diaries(on opendiary.com)? If yes, what do you think..if no, then based on the name, does it sound interesting to you? Hicks: Shukhevych: Cinderella: Oliver: A tinfoil valentine: Burning River: joebeginswithajay: i hate these questions. 2303. Do you ever get so nervous that you can't even think? opposite actually. i’ll get so nervous that all i’ll do is overthink. 2304. Do you sing when there is no music? not often.

2305. Would you rather cast a spell or say a prayer? say a prayer. don’t wna fuck with the supernatural. 2306. Why does the US dollar bill have a pyramid on it? no idea. 2307. Who was the best political leader in history and why? tbh i don’t have enough knowledge to answer this. 2308. What was the first sex toy you ever used? haha who knows. i’m sure people got creative. 2309. If you hated a book, would you burn it? no. 2310. What are your feelings about pornography? i don’t really watch it. some of it can be really demeaning to women, but as long as all actors are consenting, getting paid well and are safe then whatever. 2311. What are your feelings about people who are against pornogrophy? that’s cool, i respect everyone’s opinion. 2312. If you could dance with anyone in the world right now, who would it be and what song would you dance to? my boyfriend. we’d milly rock hahaha. 2313. What is your favorite flavor of schnapps? butterscotch. 2314. Finish this sentence your own way. There are two types of people in the world... those who do surveys, and those who don’t. 2315. What have you saved since elementary school? a lot of my awards funnily enough. 2316. Have you ever won an award? yes. 2317. Are you more: good or evil? good. wise or foolish? foolish. safe or dangerous? safe. satisfied or envious? envious. honest or decietful? honest. faithful or perfidious? faithful. sane or mad? sane. strong or weak? weak. enigmatic or plain? plain. aggressive or peaceful? in between. brave or timid? timid. humane or cruel? humane. critical or appreciative? appreciative. temperamental or calm? calm. sad or happy? happy. normal or unusual? normal. 2318. How do you feel about Terri Schiavo? who? 2319. Do you feel more connected to the sun or the moon? sun. 2320. Do flaws make people interesting to you? not all of them. 2321. Who is your favorite historical figure? frida kahlo. 2322. White bread or wheat bread? white. 2323. Would you rather never have sex again or have sex once with a walrus? ummm. not sure.. 2324. Would you rather sky dive or deep sea dive? maybe deep sea tbh. i’d hate to do either though. 2325. What is the kinkiest thing you've ever done? done it in public. 2326. What is your favorite pick-up line? i hate pick up lines. 2327. Do you usually do things fast or right? if i know how to do it well, i’ll do it fast. 2328. What will the most common halloween costume be this year? it was eleven this year. 2329. What was it last year? harley quinn. 2330. Is love a choice or something that can't be helped? both. but once you’re in love it’s hard to get out of it. 2331. What is your preferred method of birth control? the pill. 2332. Is there someone you see everyday (or sometimes) that you would like to hug and talk to but you just don't know them well enough? no lol. 2333. Are you or have you ever been in a band? no. 2334. Here are 4 statements about me. Only one of them is true. Which one is it? a. I lost my mind doing drugs. b. I've been arrested before. c. I have 9 cats. <---- this. d. I have a children's book published. 2335. What do you think of the smashing pumpkins? nothing. 2336. Would you wear a thong bathing suit in public? nooo. 2337. Hello I love you won't you tell me your name? no. 2338. If you had to be surgically attached at the hip for two years to either Britney Spears, George W. Bush or an ugly creepy troublesome but nice troll, who would you pick and why? britney because why not. 2339. Let's assume that there is a "meaning of life," a reason for humans to be here on this planet. Would you give up both of your legs and one of your arms if it would mean everyone else would learn the meaning of life? no. the mystery of it is better. 2340. If you could meet God and talk to him for 5 hours, -or- find out whether or not there is intelligent life on other planets and make contact with them, which would you pick and why? (Note: If you meet God, you will never find out if there is intelligent life on other planets, so you can't ask God if aliens exist. Also, you would get no proof that you had talked to him or her. And finally, if God doesn't exist then you don't get to meet him or her!). i’d find out whether or not there’s intelligent life on other planets. i don’t want to choose god and then find out he never existed. 2341. Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, or the Breakfast Club? breakfast club. 2342. Before you read this question, pick a person from your life, any person. (You have to be thinking about someone before you continue!). Would you rather have the ability to watch that person for one hour per day, or would you rather have that person watch you for one hour per day? Who is it and why? (you pick the hour - they don't know that they are being watched - it's like there are invisible TV cameras following them around)? i’d rather watch my boyfriend for an hour a day. i like my privacy. 2343. Would you rather be guaranteed to have your dream job or never be heartbroken? i’d rather take my dream job with the possibility of getting heart broken. 2344. Have you thought about death today? no. 2345. What is your favorite breakfast? a big breakfast. eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes. 2346. What is your favorite classic movie? sound of music. 2347. Gold or silver eyeshadow? gold. 2348. Are you the life of the party? no. 2349. Do you wish you were? no. 2350. Sdrawkcab daer uoy nac? yes. 2351. If you realize that a student at your school or a colleague from your job has plagiarised part of their work from the internet. What do you do? i’d approach them first to discuss it. 2352. What does your computer look like when you aren't looking at it?? idk. 2353. If you aren't looking at it, how do you know it's still there when your back is turned? i wouldn’t know. 2354. If you hit an animal with your car would you get out to try and make sure it was okay? it depends what animal tbh. i’d be wary about getting out if it was a predatory wild animal. 2355. If it was someone's cat (collared with address) would you knock on their door and appologize for hitting the cat? yes. 2356. How do you feel about the people who are teased in high school suing the bullies who teased them for emotional damage? that’s cool. i didn’t know it was a thing. 2357. Do you have an interest in any of the following: guns: explosives: marilyn manson: trench coats: the mafia: death: satanism: nazis: that doom game: none of these. 2358. Do you believe that people live in their own worlds or realities or do you think we all share the same world/reality? i’m sure there’s people out there that live their own reality. 2359. Do you believe that Nazism was a characteristically German thing, or do you think a similar type of government could spring up in any country? not sure. 2360. Is your diary in the internet archive wayback machine (http://www.archive.org/web/web.php)? idk. 2361. When do you get your most peaceful and satisfying sleep? when i’m really tired and it’s dark and quiet af. 2362. What thought gets you out of bed in the morning? if i have something important to do. 2363. Do you get along better with guys or girls (as friends)? it honestly depends on one’s personality. 2364. What does tx81z stand for? no clue. 2365. How many points is the letter Z worth in Scrabble? 8 or 10? i forgot. 2366. In poker, which hand is better: four of a kind or a straight? four of a kind.  2367. What is the official language of Australia? english. 2368. On what continent would you find British Columbia? north america. 2369. Have you been to homestarrunner.com? no. 2370. What promise could you never keep? something that meant life or death. 2371. No cat has 8 tails. Every cat has one tail more than no cat. How many tails does every cat have? one. 2372. What are you a member of? my work’s union lol. 2373. If you and your mate were stranded at sea on a scuba diving trip like in the movie Open Water, how would you survive? fml no idea, best thing to do is keep swimming until we see land. 2374. Do you feel confident that you would know what to do under emergency circumstances? not at all. 2375. Have you ever been stood up? i don’t think so. i’ve been flaked on but i’ve never been somewhere waiting for someone and they never showed. 2376. Use a simile to describe yourself. cbf. 2377. Good. Now use a metaphor. no. 2378. Have you ever had an unusual piercing? nope. 2379. Have you ever experienced culture shock? nope. 2380. Imagine you were trapped in one of the world trade center towers on 9/11/01. Who would you call and what would you say to them in those last few minutes? definitely my mum or dad. 2381. Do you ever go to school or work when you feel like you do not look your best?? yes. 2382. Does doing this effect your whole day? not really. 2383. What was the last movie you watched and what did you learn from it? i forgot. 2384. Do you believe that everyone who doesn't believe in your religion is going to hell? nope. 2385. What is the best thing about winter? cuddling. 2386. Do you ever shovel your neighbor's walk? no lol. 2387. How often do you hold back from saying what you are thinking? half the time. 2388. Have you ever looked back at someone you loved and wondered 'what attracted me to THEM?' haha sometimes. 2389. What do you think of Drew Barrymore? no opinion. i did like her netflix show though. 2390. Name one thing you refuse to ever do. bungee jump. 2391. Name one place you refuse to ever go. north korea. 2392. Do you think people see you more as who you are or what you are? what. 2393. Pick 3 random letters: sex. Now think of the first 3 things that pops into your head that starts with each letter. sex, electricity, xylophone. 2394. Do you dress more revealing or more to cover up? depends. i do both. 2395. What does it take to be a 'real gentleman'? be kind, charming, respectful. 2396. Where would you go if you were going somewhere you don't usually go? the beach lol. 2397. On the first sept 11th anniversary, the new york lottery's winning numbers were 9,1 and 1. Do you believe this is fate, coincidence or a conspiracy/plan? how can there be two 1′s in the lottery? 2398. Have you ever noticed that there is a lie in the middle of the word believe? ha ha ha. 2399. When (and if) people (or animals) go to heaven, do they become angels? i guess we’ll find out. 2400. What is your most important body part? brain.